1 



4 




GERMAN HOME LIFE 



* Rise, Teuton woman ! claim your right denied 
To nobler labour : show your strength defied, 
And on Germania's mighty forehead place 
The absent touch of glory and of grace' 

Emily Pfeiffer 




D. APPLE TON AND CO. 
549 & 551 BROADWAY 
NEW YORK 
1876 



PREFACE. 




A SECOND EDITION of German Home Life calls for a 
few words of preface. 

In preparing the papers, which form the contents 
of the present volume, for Frasers Magazine, it was 
the author's earnest endeavour to speak, in so far as 
it had been given her to know it, the exact truth ; 
to 'nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice;' 
to register facts, not to chronicle opinions. 

Thus, when these essays were reprinted for general 
circulation, it seemed better to let them go forth to 
the world on their own merits. If the work were well 
done, introduction and apology would be superfluous; 
if badly done, no explanation of the writer's " good 
intentions " could save the book from that literary 
limbo which we may suppose to be pav^d: with the 
well-meant efforts of the aspiring incompetent. 

But, after the kind reception with which the volume 
has met, it would be ungracious, in preparing a second 
edition for the press, to pass by on the other side of 
questioning critics. It has been objected by one of 
these that, while the term 4 middle ' class is used, the 
middle class is entirely unrepresented in the pages of 



X 



PREFACE. 



German Home Life. It is explained {vide chapters 
on Manners and Men) that the middle class, as we 
understand it in England, does not exist in Germany; 
and the term has been employed, for want of a better, 
to designate that vast section of society in the Father- 
land which, standing between the great nobles and 
the commonalty, is chiefly recruited from the former 
class, is imbued with all the pride of caste and poli- 
tical prejudices that govern aristocratic communities, 
and combines, not seldom in a manner painful to the 
beholder, large pretensions with most inadequate 
means. Another critic first scolds because no mention 
is made of 1 university and commercial circles ; 1 and 
then condoles with the author for her ill-fortune in 
having chanced on such an insignificant, * uninteresting, 
and barren area of German society as that which she 
depicts.' The only reply to this is, that to describe 
circumstances of which she had no knowledge would 
have been to depart from the plan which the author 
of these sketches had laid down for herself; namely, 
to confine herself strictly within the limits of personal 
observation. But, though denied the privilege of such 
charmed intercourse, she is proud in this place to 
acknowledge the friendship of more than one eminent 
German professor, and to record with feelings of affec- 
tionate reverence the fact that the pages of this little 
book chiefly owe their inspiration to the kindly en- 
couragement of a distinguished German intellect, 
now, alas ! 'consigned to dust.' 



PREFACE. 



xi 



' I, who have lived fifteen years in England, have 
often been surprised and pained/ said the Professor, 
'at the apathy and ignorance of your countrymen as 
to German circumstances. Even the commonplace 
of our daily existence is unknown to them. Try to 
tell them something about us to which they will 
listen. Write a book — a little book — telling your 
own experiences, what you have seen, and what you 
know ; the simple matters of every-day life. Be frank, 
and be as gay as, having to do with a heavy people, 
it is possible to be. Above all, no German pedantry ; 
no laboured exposition of patent facts, or wearisome 
iteration of insignificant details. No learned pratings, 
no philosophy, metaphysics, or scientific jargonings 
generally. As few figures and as many facts as 
possible ; and you must produce a readable volume.' 

In ' commercial/ as in ' university circles/ the 
tone may be more cultured, more elastic, more refined, 
and spirits generally ' touched to finer issues/ than in 
the military and official society of which our critic 
speaks with so fine a contempt. But in the land of 
barrack and bureau, military and official society 
(numerically the largest of ' all estates of men/ com- 
posing the body politic of the Empire) can scarcely 
be dismissed, with a depreciatory wave of the hand, 
as unimportant factors in the sum total of the State. 
No doubt the wisdom of the ancients and the 
enterprise of the moderns exercise a more humane 
influence on mankind than the shedding of blood or 



xii 



PREFACE. 



the flashing of steel ; but it must be remembered that 
blood and iron are in the ascendant now, and that the 
proportion of the commercial and learned to the 
official and military elements in the Fatherland is in 
about the same ratio as the victories of Saul were to 
the victories of David. Thus, numerically, steel and 
red-tape prevail (for the time being) over commerce 
and culture, and the tone and the society which the 
author has attempted to describe preponderates in 
Imperial Germany. 

Again, it has been objected that, where the effects 
of consanguinity in marriage are alluded to, i facts 
and figures ought to have backed up the statements ; 
the subject should have been treated scientifically and 
at length, or left alone altogether.' 

Surely not. A medical treatise in a book such as 
may almost be read by Theophile Gautier's ' petites 
demoiselles] would resemble Lord Palmerston's de- 
finition of dirt. Such a subject can only be treated, 
in its deepest depths, by a medical journal. That it 
has been so treated over and over again in Germany, 
where the statement could create no surprise, must 
be well known to all physiologists. For such proof 
as the lay reader may enjoy, we refer him to German 
novels and biographies, where he will find that it is 
always the cousins, and sometimes nearer relations, 
who marry. If no person were allowed to assert a 
fact without ' backing it up' on the spot by figures 
and statistics, we should at the present day be still 



PREFACE. 



xiii 



walking about, every fifth woman of us, scarred with 
small-pox and shorn of hair and eyelashes. Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu did not worry the world with 
Turkish statistics ; she had her child inoculated. That 
was at once argument, proof, and apology. But she 
opened the door to science and Dr. Jenner. 

It has been remarked that German enlightenment 
and culture should have been dwelt upon at greater 
length. But to praise German intellect at second 
hand, and to serve up as a rechauffe the long ac- 
cepted dictum of educated Europe, that from the 
Fatherland flow streams of knowledge fresh and deep, 
would have appeared to the author a vexatious im- 
pertinence, offensive in its presumptuous platitude, 
alike to the pioneers of modern thought, and to the 
general reader. 

• The whole of Germany ought to be known/ says 
Heine ; ' a part is dangerous. It is like the story of the 
trees whose leaves and fruit are antidotes to each 
other/ 

Imbued with this truth, it was the author's aim to 
eliminate the purely local from her work, and to 
chronicle only such salient characteristics as she 
believed to have remarked, with but trifling variations 
of form, in widely distant districts. But memory may 
have played her false ; and the extreme difficulty of 
describing in broad general terms a life which varies 
in detail in every petty State, may have well proved 
a pitfall to the unwary steps of the wanderer. 



xiv 



PREFACE. 



The German terms and phrases employed have 
been carefully considered. Only such are retained as 
are essential to the subject, or have no proper equiva- 
lent in English. In many cases the conditions 
described have no existence with us, and therefore 
no intelligible translation can be afforded. 

The word i slaughterer ' is made use of as being 
the nearest translation of i Schlachter ' or ' Fleischer/ 
for which we have the Scotch equivalent 1 flesher ; ' 
both terms sounding coarser in English ears than 
' butcher,' the valuable individual who supplies us 
with the welcome ' bonne boiichc. 9 

Nor is it a conscious affectation to speak of 
' George Lewis ' of Hanover. It was emphatically 
Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, not George L, 
by the grace of God, King of England, that the 
author desired to bring before the mind's eye of the 
reader. 

In conclusion, the writer takes this opportunity of 
acknowledging many interesting and some amusing 
letters from unknown correspondents, whilst she 
would more especially thank her ' cousins-Grerman 9 
for the friendly spirit in which they have received 
these pictures of their own home life. And last, but 
not least, she desires to express her appreciation of 
the liberal encouragement and kindly criticism which 
a generous English press has accorded to an anony- 
mous author. 



London: October 8, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Servants i 

II. Furniture . . . . . . . 23 

III. Food ....... 4^ 

IV. Manners and Customs . . . . . 70 
V. Language . . . . • ' • 95 

VI. Dress . . . . . . . 127 

VII. Amusements . . . . . 147 

VIII. Women . . . . . . 169 

IX. Men ....... 197 

X. Marriage and Children . . . . 225 

XI. Religion . . . . . . 259 

XII. The Church . . . . . . 2S6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



CHAPTER L 

SERVANTS. 
4 The neat-handed Phillis. '— Milton. 

The mutual obligations between master and man, 
mistress and maid, form a vexed question, and a 
highly interesting one to many. The labourer has 
voted himself worthy of better hire, and been fighting 
his battle ; the artisan his ; the miner has contributed 
to raise the price of coal and iron ; the clerk and the 
shopman nowadays enjoy privileges of which their 
predecessors did not venture to dream. There is 
little danger of the fair claims of domestic servants 
being overlooked. But, on the whole, perhaps the 
mistresses have the better reason to i strike ' of the 
two — the mistresses, more especially, of middle-class 
households, where high (and daily increasing) prices 
in food, coals, and rent are not met by any propor- 
tionate increase of income. In fact, the eagerness 
with which poor ladies seek situations as telegraph 
clerks, accountants, post-office employees, and cashiers 

B 



2 



GERMAN HOME LI EE. 



certainly leads one to regard with amazement the 
modesty and eagerness to work of the one class in 
contrast with the encroachments and pretensions of 
the other. 

We are apt to think of foreign, or at any rate of 
French servants, that they are cleaner, pleasanter, 
more easily satisfied, more amenable to reason, less 
boorish, and possessed of finer tact than are our 
English domestics. This may be so ; though I cannot 
help fancying that the difference lies a great deal in 
difference of locality, and that we, in going to live 
abroad, arc prepared to leave many of our habits and 
prejudices behind, and to accept, on foreign shores, 
that which we should unhesitatingly reject within our 
own borders. 

German servants — and I can speak from many 
years' experience — are certainly not pleasant in their 
commerce, nor easy to get on with. They have none 
of that bright French amiability (lip-service though it 
may be) which is so sympathetic, smooths away so 
many domestic difficulties, and recommends itself so 
pleasantly to a mistress's gratitude and recognition. 
The schools throughout Germany are numerous, ex- 
cellent, and cheap. The poorest children must receive 
a fair amount of education, where education is com- 
pulsory and the fines for non-attendance severe ; they 
are taught to read and write, to spell decently, and 
even the higher branches of culture are not alto- 
gether neglected ; but they are turned out hopelessly 
uncouth ; coarse in manner, and unhandy at their 
work ; often incorrigibly dirty, without aptitude or 
willingness to learn, doggedly satisfied with them- 
selves, and convinced that the right thing to do is to 



SERVANTS. 



3 



treat any attempt on your part to ameliorate their 
manners, or improve their condition, with a loutish 
ridicule. ' While I have seen ' — says a writer in the 
* Contemporary Review/ pointing out the difference 
between mere book-learning and education — ' while I 
have seen perfect manners, of their kind, in the pea- 
sants of more than one country, Eastern and Western, 
I think the worst-mannered people in Europe — per- 
haps in the world — are the highly-taught Prussians.' 

Two instances occur to me as I write these words 
which will illustrate my meaning. Having a very de- 
licate child, I brought for him from England a peram- 
bulator, and told the nurse, as he was not allowed 
to walk and I would not permit him to be swathed up 
in a mantle and carried for hours with his spine dis- 
torted (after the fashion in that part of the country), 
that she could take him out daily in his little carriage. 
She said nothing ; but the next day I saw her, as 
usual, swathing him up in her mantle. I interfered, 
and reminded her of the perambulator. She stolidly 
refused to use it. I insisted, but to no effect. ' Die 
ganze Stadt wird mich auslachen ' was all I could get 
from her, and she departed in triumph with the child 
in her mantle, to recount her exploits to her gossips, 
and to laugh at my English newfangledness. The 
next day the same representations, the same remon- 
strances, and the same result. The third day she 
remarked that she would rather go than be made 
the laughing-stock of the other nursemaids ; and 
upon my telling her that I had no objection to her 
going, provided she would do so at once, she calmly 
reminded me that, as servants only changed their 

B 2 



4 



places on quarter-day, she would certainly not give up 
board and lodging and wages to please a fancy of 
mine. So, as I could not allow the child to be injured,. 
I had no alternative but to take him out myself ; the 
recalcitrant Jette walking sulkily by my side whilst I 
wheeled the perambulator. I was ridiculed, of course, 
by gentle as well as simple ; but I took pains to 
reason with my new nursemaid as to this part of her 
duties, pointing out to her how much pleasanter and 
less fatiguing it must be to use the perambulator than 
to carry a heavy child for four hours in her arms. It 
is only fair to add that at least twenty nursemaids re- 
fused the situation when they heard of the conditions 
attached to it. Perambulators are now, doubtless, as 
popular in Germany as elsewhere ; but at that time 
they had not even been heard of in the remote town 
where I was sojourning. 

Being much exercised in my mind as to the dis- 
comfort of the servants' meals, I bought them table- 
cloths, and had a table and some chairs placed in a 
small room near the kitchen, where I begged them to 
sit down to a cleanly-spread table, taking their food 
at one time, with bread and salt and the etceteras 
comfortably arranged. They suffered the tablecloths 
to be presented to them with a sort of stolid apathy, 
but evidently considered I was endeavouring to 
tyrannise over them and unduly exercise my autho- 
rity. The very next day, looking by chance into the 
kitchen, I saw the man-servant seated on the wood- 
basket, eating his mess of pottage out of the earthen- 
ware porringer in which it had been cooked ; whilst the 
maids' empty plates stood in sloppy disorder, one on 



SERVANTS, 



5 



the window-sill with a pewter, the other on the table 
with a wooden spoon. There was no carpet in the 
kitchen, a brick floor, and only one wooden chair by 
way of furniture ; but they persistently resisted all my 
attempts to make them comfortable, replying dog- 
gedly, ' Wir sind es nicht gewohnt,' and ridiculing my 
well-meant efforts to their acquaintances above and 
below stairs as part of the stupidity and fussiness of 
the foreigner. 

A German servant has no sort of training for ser- 
vice, and has therefore no method or routine in her 
work. Every mistress of a household will understand 
my meaning when it is explained that a young girl, 
having served in four or five different houses, will have 
done so in a different capacity in each. She will 
have been nursemaid, maid of all w r ork, cook and 
housemaid, sewing maid, and consequently a Jill of 
all trades and mistress of none. Every servant on 
entering service is provided with a Dienstbucli, dealt 
out to her by the police authorities, and she has to 
announce herself {sick zu meldett) at the police office 
every time she changes her situation. In this Dienst- 
huch are registered her name and age, and native 
place ; and on each page is a printed formula, which 
the mistress she is leaving is obliged to fill up, as to 
her cleanliness, industry, honesty, moral conduct, so- 
briety, &c, as well as the reason of her leaving her 
situation, the date on which she entered, and that on 
which she left it. At a first glance these books would 
appear to be most admirable institutions, but, in fact, 
they are utterly worthless. Few mistresses care to be 
involved in the toil and trouble of bringing home any 



6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



special charge ; and, if a lady cannot substantiate her 
accusations, she lays herself open to an action for 
defamation of character. Then, again, a certain sort 
of feeble philanthropy leads one to shirk i taking the 
bread out of a girl's mouth,' never considering whether 
one is justified in rendering a whole family miserable 
in order to supply the young woman with the staff of 
life, which we have ourselves found it impossible to 
afford her any longer ; and, again, the disastrous sys- 
tem of rambling, slipshod gossip that is carried on 
between mistress and maid, whilst the potatoes are 
being peeled and the carrots scraped, breeds a famili- 
arity that is apt to turn to contempt in the inferior 
mind, and is destructive of anything like truthfulness 
or independence on the part of the mistress in these 
matters. All the morning the lady potters in and out 
of the kitchen, and, between lifting the saucepan lids 
and deploring the scarcity of eggs and the dearness of 
butter, many little confidences are likely to pass. 
Christina has heard from Johanna this or that about 
the Frau Major inn So-and-So ; and Jette told Dorette 
at market that it was quite certain that the Herr 
Gcneral\&A beaten the Frau Gencralinn black and blue 
last night ; perhaps the Frau Gencralinn was not such 
an angel as she would have the world suppose ; but,. 
Du lieber Gott ! one musn't listen to all the people 
said, for there were plenty of malicious tongues about, 
but could the gnddige Frau ever have believed that the 
Frau Geheimerdthinn could have treated her daugh- 
ter's Brdutigam as she had done ? And so their talk 
flows on ; the maid repeating the miserable tittle- 
tattle of the women of her class ; the mistress helping 



SERVANTS. 



7 



the scandal further in the coffee-parties whither it is 
her custom to resort of an afternoon. Under these 
circumstances it is not to be expected that much can- 
dour will characterise the mistress's estimate of her 
maid. Just as she has listened to tittle about others, 
others will listen to tattle about her ; and, if she has not 
been above carrying contemptible gossip from house 
to house, she will not expect a more magnanimous 
forbearance ; and thus a network of ignoble gossip 
and petty scandal is woven about ' society/ and 
covers it with an invisible, poisonous web. 

In ordinary German households — i.e. in the house- 
holds of lawyers, doctors, young military men, small 
Government officials, &c. — as a rule only one servant is 
kept. If there are children there will be a nursemaid ; 
and if perennial babes flourish, there will be also that 
disastrous institution, an Amine. If the household 
be that of a military man (and nine out of ten of 
your acquaintances wear uniform), there will be an 
orderly, who helps with the rougher work, such as the 
hewing of wood and drawing of water ; but, as a rule, 
he will have no livery, but rather fulfil the necessary 
duties of ' odd man ' about the household, departing, 
when his work is over, to his other avocations. In 
engaging a servant you will find that she invariably 
bargains for her ' Sunday out.' She belongs to a 
Krdnzcken, or club ; and it will be her privilege to 
depart early on Sunday afternoons to the coffee- 
garden where the festive meeting is held. Of 
church-going there is, in Protestant Germany, no 
question ; but of much dancing during Sunday after- 
noons with the Brciutigam of the moment there can 



8 



GERMAN HOME EIEE. 



be no evasion. This is a matter of custom and right, 
to which it would be useless folly to demur. Of 
' walking-out ' nothing much is said. At seven o'clock 
a servant's work is considered to be finished. It is 
then her privilege to take her stand in some conve- 
nient corner of the garden, or under the parte coc/inr, 
and there, stocking in hand, to finish the day with 
gossip and flirtation. 

Thus the custom of lounging in doorways makes 
locomotion far afield a work of supererogation, nor 
will the click of knitting-needles nor the clack of 
tongues be pretermitted, even though the master and 
mistress pass by that way. From Easter to Michael- 
mas your servants thus will stand ; and, however dis- 
tasteful the custom or exasperating the right to their 
employers, it would be useless to attempt to suppress 
it. It is their ' custom, and they will.' For stolid, 
heavy, unemotional sticking to their rights, for an 
inelastic temperament, and an unyielding selfishness, 
German servants are, perhaps, unrivalled in Europe. 

Formerly (I am not speaking of so very many 
years ago) a servant almost invariably wore the 
TracJit, or costume, of her country or district. I was 
delighted in the first German town where I sojourned 
w 7 ith the trim, picturesque maid-servants, all wearing 
bright-coloured petticoats, black jackets, and caps of 
lace and muslin, perfect marvels of whiteness and 
clear-starching, tied beneath the coils of shining hair 
in a miraculous bow ; w 7 hilst their tidy baskets and 
umbrellas, substantial shoes and knitted stockings, 
their bright earrings and buckles, gave them an ap- 
pearance of homely smartness that was pleasant to 



SERVANTS. 



9 



the eye. Who does not regret that neat bodice and 
homespun petticoat, the arrow fastening the plaits, 
the little coquettish pointed cap of black ribbon, with 
its broad streamers, those silver buckles and Mieder 
ornaments, w T hich formerly marked the distinction of 
classes, and that certainly not to the disadvantage of 
the maids ? Now the ambition of every country girl 
is to go stddtischy or 1 townly,' dressed ; to ape, that 
is (as, alas ! with us), in inferior material the apparel 
of her betters, so that the bright, tidy national cos- 
tumes have disappeared with alarming rapidity out of 
German households, vice vulgar finery and dingy 
frippery promoted. The consequences are unplea- 
sant ; the servants make themselves ' smart ' like their 
mistresses for the afternoon, but it is Avith an unsatis- 
factory smartness, depending more upon plaits and 
pomatum than upon cleanliness and freshness of attire. 
The outside of the cup and the platter may be clean 
■enough for those who are content to take things on 
the surface ; but, even then, in the best houses the 
demure smartness of fresh print gowns, tidy caps, 
white linen collars and cuffs, and pretty white aprons, 
is unknown ; and I have often seen a lady's maid 
come into her mistress's presence at one o'clock in the 
•day in list slippers, hair undressed, a cap anything 
but coquettish, a coarse loose jacket, and a coloured 
apron, far from clean. You will see the same damsel 
going to her ball on Sunday in the wreath of flowers 
and muslin dress which are indispensable to her en- 
joyment ; but these doubtful glories are reserved for 
important occasions (in which you have no part), and 
for the young man who pays for the lemonade. 



IO 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



As a rule, in Germany, the servants change their 
situations only at quarter-day, and, though now and 
again some spirited damsel may take the mors aux 
dents and summarily depart, the rule is generally ob- 
served ; so that the mistress who has been made miser- 
able at Christmas has to endure the maid's presence 
until Easter, when quarter-day strikes the order for 
release, and the unwilling, incompetent, dirty, or dis- 
obedient 1 help ' carries herself off. Under such cir- 
cumstances it is not to be wondered at if the ' ways ' 
of domestic life are neither ways of pleasantness nor 
paths of peace. And even should you assert your 
independence, and, throwing off custom's thrall, refuse 
to be annoyed by the presence of a rebellious member 
of your household, you will scarcely find yourself 
better off, since there will be no disengaged damsels 
ready to take the rebel's place. This being the case, 
you had better bide your time until quarter-day shall 
sanction the welcome change. As a rule, there is a 
great disinclination to leave a good place at Christ- 
mas. Between two stools it is difficult not to fall to 
the ground, and the out-going or in-coming maid is 
neither welcomed with, nor sped by, parting gifts. The 
wages of an ordinary female servant vary from three 
to five pounds a year, seldom passing the limit, unless 
in the larger towns, of six pounds ; therefore Christ- 
mas gifts form an important item in their receipts. 
These, of course, vary according to the resources of 
the family ; but in the most modest household the 
maid of all work will receive not less than a Thaler, a 
neat gown, some unbleached linen, a pound of coffee, 
and minor gifts in the shape of Pfeffe)'- and Honig- 



SERVANTS. 



ii 



kitchen, a comforter, a pair of gloves, or a shawl. In 
larger establishments the Trinkgelder will be on a more 
liberal scale : two or three Thaler each for the women 
and four or five for the men, and the gifts in kind of 
a proportionately better quality. At the greater and 
lesser fair (festivals which take place in most towns 
twice yearly) your servants will expect at least a 
Thaler, to be spent in fairings ; and it is customary to 
give that sum, or more, if you are liberally inclined, to 
the nurse who comes to tell you that your last infant 
has cut its first tooth. Servants, both men and maids, 
only consider the engagement to enter your service 
binding if you give them what is called Handgeld (the 
customary Thaler) y as a pledge that on your part it is 
a bond-fide transaction. 

In almost everything domestics are allowanced, 
provisions (not stores only) being kept under strict 
lock and key, and doled out from meal to meal accord- 
ing to want or necessity by the indefatigable Haus- 
frau. So much bread and so much butter is allowed, 
or board wages are given, so that the servants are in- 
dependent, in all smaller matters, of the family food. 
In botcrgeois families, where a certain national fare is 
the order of the day, masters and servants consume 
their Hausmannskost in friendly unison ; but in better 
class households, where three or four domestics are 
kept, and somewhat of the French and English 
cuisines enter into competition with the German, an 
entirely separate table is a necessary evil. There is 
no eating of cold joints, no consuming of made 
dishes which have already done duty upstairs ; the ap- 
pointed dinner and supper for every day of the week 



12 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



is strictly adhered to, and any attempt to interfere 
with the gastronomic rights of the Dicnstlcutc would 
cause rebellion in the kitchen. 

Being ignorant on many of the more occult mat- 
ters of housekeeping, I asked a friend to give me some 
safe rules by which to guide my household, and on 
which to frame my code of domestic laws. She sup- 
plied me with those I quote below, by which, she told 
me, she had conducted her establishment for years. 
I should premise the quotation by saying that the 
family consisted of herself and husband, two children, 
a governess, lady's maid, cook, housemaid, and man- 
servant. Her husband holding a high position at 
Court, carriages and coachmen were always at his 
command. 1 

Rules. — Allow your servants four Thaler (12s.) 
yearly for coffee and sugar, one Thaler (3^.) for each 
fair, and at least the same as a Christmas-box. 
Twice a week fresh meat for dinner ; on the other days 
the soup meat from which your soup has been made, 
with vegetables, potatoes, pickled cabbage, &c. For 
supper, soups either of oatmeal, flour, rice, Gries or 
Gi'iitze, &c. If boiled with milk, no sugar is allowed ; 
if with water, a little will be required. Tea being 
drunk in our house, according to English fashion, on 
Sunday and Thursday, they have what is left in our 
teapot, with the addition of two lumps of sugar and 

1 The Princess Salm-Salm gives an amusing account of how, 
being also conscious of her insufficient knowledge respecting domestic 
matters, she puts herself under the tutelage of a skilled German Haus- 
fratii and how, in her zeal to emulate the good lady's penny wisdom, 
shows such frugal fervour, that her husband, being used to more liberal 
fare, 4 strikes,' and the household is thenceforth absolved from what 
he contemptuously calls ' the starvation code.' 



SERVANTS. 



13 



two white rolls each. Mondays, Wednesdays, and 
Fridays supper consists of some kind of soup, as above, 
and one roll of bread. Tuesday, potatoes, with her- 
rings or mustard sauces. Saturday, pancakes and 
salad. If pancakes are made, one egg is allowed for 
each person. If rice and milk is cooked for servants, 
half a pint of milk and a teacupful of rice is allowed 
for each person. I see that the dripping from all 
joints is melted down, clarified, and put into jars ; it 
is used for all servants' vegetables, frying and basting. 
White beans, lentils, dried apples, pears, and plums 
are used for servants' vegetables. If washing is done 
at home, allow half-a-pound of soap for each well 
piled up basket of linen. If wood is burnt in the 
stoves the ashes must be carefully collected to make 
Lauge for the wash. A laundress gets 17 \ Silber- 
groschen the first day (not quite 2s.) and 1 5 Silber- 
groschen for the following days. She comes at 
four in the morning ; her dinner and supper are 
brought to her, coffee and w T hite bread are allowed 
her, one ounce of coffee and six lumps of sugar per 
diem. A charwoman gets *]\ Silbergroschen the day ; 
a mender, 5 Silbergroschen. 

It is only fair to add that prices have steadily 
risen since the late war ; and I can fancy a fair young 
Englishwoman turning up her nose in disgust at 
these mean details, and setting down the so-called 
• lady ' as a fussy, frumpish old woman. She w r as, on 
the contrary, a very charming person, giving brilliant 
balls and recherche dinners, and drawing an income 
of a thousand a year, independent of her husband, 
from her English property. To me, I confess, all this 



detailed domesticity appeared little less than a waste 
of life. I ventured even to say so to her, complain- 
ing that the German ladies did the cooking whilst the 
servants only cleaned the pots and pans. She agreed 
that the so-called ' cooks ' were miserably ignorant ; 
but went on to say that a German servant who never 
saw her mistress in the kitchen would soon despise her 
as a bad Hausfrau, and would probably begin a system 
of thieving, under the impression that her mistress 
was so rich it did not matter, or so stupid she would 
not discover it. 

A housekeeper in Germany is called a Mamscll, 
no matter whether wife, widow, or maid ; and in large 
households she will have the control of what is con- 
sumed, and will of course save the mistress much 
trouble and fatigue. 

Every servant is expected to wash her own clothes, 
and those of the family, either with or without assist- 
ance : a custom which leads to an economy in matters 
of cleanliness, distressing in more senses than one. 
It is the pride of many a German Haasfrau to boast 
that she has a 1 wash ' only twice a year : this 
announces great hoards of linen, and is intended to 
strike awe and admiration into your soul. To every 
reflecting person so disgusting a custom is calculated 
to inspire feelings of horror at the accumulation of 
unhealthiness and unpleasantness which (without 
entering more fully into the subject) must be the 
necessary consequence of so nasty a practice. In my 
time it was considered frivolous, as well as shabby, to 
send your clothes to the weekly wash — implied that 
you had only a change of linen, and had not been 



SERVANTS. 



15 



bred in thrifty ways. Servants cannot, of course, 
even by the utmost economy in cleanliness and the 
strictest devotion to dirt, make their clothes last them 
for six months ; though they retire to rest every night 
in the under-garments and stockings they have worn 
and worked in all day, with the addition perhaps of a 
loose jacket over the petticoat, or a woollen shawl 
pinned across the bare neck and arms. No pro- 
vision is made for their doing their laundry work, 
and, when it has to be done, they accomplish it with- 
out a murmur by rising two or three hours earlier in 
the morning, and pursuing their labours into the 
night. 

Inmost houses a so-called Waschkammer is pro- 
vided, the floor and walls being of concrete, so that 
rats and mice cannot penetrate, and the windows in 
the roof so arranged as to permit of a current of air ; 
but, even with these precautions, the custom of hoard- 
ing quantities of soiled linen is one that cannot be 
too severely condemned. 

A German girl continues to be a maid of all work 
until circumstances elevate her to a higher position. 
She becomes a mother, and this opens a fresh career 
to her as an Amine (wet-nurse). Her lines will thence- 
forward fall in pleasant places. It is extremely rare 
for a German lady to nourish her own child. It is 
a startling fact, but a fact nevertheless, that, during 
seven years' residence in Germany, I only knew two 
gentlewomen who had accomplished this natural duty. 
In the one case my friend, a still beautiful woman of 
five-and-forty, had had twelve children ; in the other, 
the son and daughter were already grown up, and the 



i6 



GERMAN HOME LI EE. 



fact was mentioned amongst other notabilia connected 
with their mother's history. 

Thus an Amine is a person of consideration. No 
disgrace or loss of character is attached to the irregu- 
larity of conduct which is often the origin of her pro- 
motion to a higher sphere. Her wages are quadrupled ; 
her fare, by comparison, is sumptuous ; she can never 
be scolded ; she is called upon to fulfil but one duty, 
namely, that which nature has imposed upon the 
mother, and which the mother delegates to her. In 
rich and noble families the Amine forms part of the 
pomp and circumstance of the house. She (probably) 
alone of all the serving women will wear her peasant's 
dress, and with a singular sort of coquetry her mistress 
will see that the smartest silver shoe-buckles and 
Mieder ornaments, the brightest scarlet cloth, the 
trimmest cap and bodice are hers ; and when she 
carries her charge through the public gardens, or is 
driven abroad for an airing, she will attract more 
notice, and receive more admiration, than equipage, 
lady, horses, and infant put together. In ordinary 
households this luxury of costume cannot be carried 
out ; but still, amidst simpler details, the occupation 
is so much more remunerative than ordinary service, 
that one can scarcely be surprised if plenty of women 
are found ready and willing to follow the trade. With 
them the child is only a means to an end ; with the 
lady it is an end without the means ; and so the 
peasant woman comes to the front, and the little 
balance of irregularity in nature is struck. 

Marriage amongst the lower orders in Germany is 
cumbered about with so many restrictions and condi- 



SERVANTS. 



17 



tions, that it has come to be looked upon almost as 
an impossibility. 1 I remember once hearing a lively 
discussion on this very subject, in a Northern duchy, 
where emigration, cholera, and the impossibility pf 
marriage amongst the labouring classes had more 
than decimated the population. The harvest lay that 
year rotting in the fields, and there was no hand to 
reap or garner in the golden grain. The neglected 
peasant offspring cannot bring the same fibre to his 
work as though care and comfort had been his ; and 
it certainly seems a false political economy which 
restricts marriage lest pauper families should come 
upon ' the parish/ and yet cannot prevent the migra- 
tion, by thousands, of tillers of the soil, with their 
illegitimate offspring. But to return to our sheep. 

My first German nursemaid was a girl of twenty, 
born and bred on the estate where I was at that time 
staying. She was engaged for me by a relative, who 
congratulated me on the acquisition. She had been 
with me a few days, when, going into the nursery, I 
found her talking to a little boy and girl. She pushed 
them forward, saying pleasantly, ' Wish the lady good 
morning/ and adding by way of explanation, smiling 
up at me with unembarrassed friendliness all the time, 

1 Wilberforce, in his Social Life in Munich, says : c Here the 
Government opposes so many impediments to marriage that they 
amount frequently to prohibition. The inquisitorial proceedings, too, 
which must be gone through before parties may dare to marry are as 
vexatious as they are ridiculous. In Munich there were in one year 
1,762 legitimate births and 1,702 illegitimate births ; nor is it rare in 
one month for the illegitimate to exceed the legitimate. In the Palati- 
nate, where the laws are less vexatious, and the material prosperity of 
the people greater, the illegitimate births are one in nine ; in Saxony 
and Prussia one in thirteen.' 

• - C • I ' • 



1 8 GERMAN HOME LIFE. 

' That is my boy and girl.' Forthwith I rushed to my 
relative. 

' You did not tell me Elspeth was married/ I said. 
' Married ? Who told you so ? Nothing of the 
kind.' 

i But I assure you she is ; I have just seen her two 
children.' 

' Cela n'empeche pas,' she said, parodying the 
words of a greater personage than herself ; and then 
she proceeded to enlighten me. i Was willst Du ? ' she 
asked in conclusion. 1 Marriage is the exception, not 
the rule, amongst people of this sort. It will make 
her all the kinder to your child that she is a mother 
herself.' The situation was new to me, and I could 
not accustom myself readily to it ; but Elspeth went 
on calmly talking of her Junge and her Madchcn, and 
only left my service when I quitted that part of Ger- 
many, and she did not care to leave her offspring 
behind. A long train of Elspeths followed her ; the 
circumstances only varying in degree, not in kind ; 
the first intimation I had of them often being after 
this fashion : ' If the Frau Grafinn has done with that 
pelisse, it w r ill just fit my youngest,' or, * My second 
boy would be glad of those socks,' and so on. I never 
got anyone to be in the least surprised, sympathetic, 
indignant, hurt, or otherwise emotional on the subject. 
German ladies take all this, as, indeed, to do them 
justice, they take most things, very philosophically. 
It was the custom — Idndlich sittlich. That which 
precedent has consecrated let no man (or woman) 
cavil at. It had its conveniences. ( I partly agree 
with what you say,' a friend once replied, to whom I 



SERVANTS. 



*9 



had been airing my grievances ; ' but I was always 
particular that my Amine had only one Brautigam! 1 
There was a ring of high virtue in this, which sug- 
gested complications undreamt of in my philosophy, 
and thenceforth I thought it as well to shut my eyes 
and ears, and pass by on the other side of the inevit- 
able. Vague misgivings were at least better than 
detailed statistics. 2 

Let us now turn to the Chasseur. We are unac- 
quainted in England with this resplendent individual, 
whose cocked hat outcocks and outplumes that of a 
general officer, and whose befrogged and belaced 
attire is of so military a character, that involuntarily 
•one straightens the dorsal vertebrae and expands the 
chest in his martial presence. He is, as it were, the 
body-guard of his master, sits upon the box of the 
carriage, springs down when his lord alights, stands 
behind his chair at dinner, loads his gun at the battue, 
carves the roast, looks to the wine, keeps an account 
of the heads of game, polishes the fire-arms, and adds 
lustre and dignity to the establishment 

Of the German Kellner not much need be said. 
He does not belong to home life, and every traveller 
knows his quickness, his good-humour, his marvellous 

1 Braut and Brautigam are only used for betrothed persons. From 
the hour of her marriage a woman is no longer a bride in Germany. 

2 A German author, pleading the cause of the lower orders against 
obstructive marriage-laws, says : ' At this moment, as I am writing, my 
servant, fifteen years of age, comes in dressed for a festival, and tells 
me that as her father and mother are going to be married to-day, she 
wishes henceforth to be called by her father's name. Twelve times the 
parents' application for licence to marry had been rejected, and every 
time the lawyer's bills, fees, and official expenses had to be defrayed by 
the unsuccessful applicants.' 

c 2 



20 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



capacity for carrying fifty-two wine-glasses and three 
hundred and sixty-five plates at a time. He is an 
ubiquitous being, and ' Ubi bene, ibi patria' is his 
motto. You find him in Rome, in New York, in 
London, in Constantinople, in St. Petersburg, in San 
Francisco, at Athens ; and he is always the same : 
always ready, always cheerful, always obliging, always 
in a hurry, and always — unmistakably German. 

There remain but the irregular corps of Dicnst- 
m'dntier and Botenfraucn to be disposed of. 

In most towns a bureau for Dienstmanner is to be 
found. These men wear a blouse and a badge. They 
will carry a bouquet or a barrel of beer for you ; they 
have a regular tariff, and on your engaging them 
present you with a little ticket, which you keep in 
case of disagreement. Should such arise, you make 
your complaint to the chef y who sits in his bureau, sur- 
rounded by his unemployed regiment ; the affair is 
adjusted, the culprit reprimanded, the fault is entered 
in a book, and another man will be told off on your 
service. For a lady shopping, who wants all her parcels 
quickly, there is no better plan than to take a Dienst- 
mann, and collect them from shop to shop ; he wili 
carry them home for her, and save her the expense of 
a carriage, or the annoyance of sending a servant for 
the thirty-nine articles, since no German tradesman 
dreams of despatching his parcels himself ; as soon as 
you have bought the goods they are your property, 
and it is your concern to fetch them. This the useful 
Dienstmann does for a few pence. 

The Botenfrau is a creature to be immortalised by 
grateful hearts. You are, for instance, spending two 



SERVANTS. 



21 



or three months in the mountains ; the nearest town 
is ten, twenty, five-and-twenty miles off. The villages 
produce nothing but children, pigs, and black bread. 
The Botcnfrau steps in, a humble goddess out of a 
machine. She sets off with her deep basket on her 
back, her weather-beaten face tied up in a shawl, her 
petticoats short, her shoes thick, and a large piece of 
oil-cloth rolled up for the protection of her purchases, 
should rainy weather supervene. You have written a 
list for her, and she goes off at a swinging trot. 
She will, if railways can help her, take a third-class 
ticket for some part of her journey, but if, as is more 
often the case, the shorter way be to walk, she accom- 
plishes her twenty, five-and-twenty, thirty miles, and 
returns to you in the evening with your volume of 
Tauchnitz, your silk and wool matched, the boots you 
had sent to be mended, a pound of tea, your favourite 
tonic ; and for this you give her a few pence, and 
receive in return thanks, a pleasant smile, and the last 
pieces of gossip from the town. 

Had our poet been born in the land of which I 
speak, he would never have written that line about 
the - neat-handed Phillis ; ' neat-handed Phillises ap- 
pearing to bear no part in the scheme of creation as 
regards the Fatherland. Their wage is low, but, after 
a long experience, I doubt whether any lowness of 
wage can compensate for the defects of which I have 
spoken. Our neat housemaids, nice nurses, trim 
parlour-maids, and capable cooks may cost a good 
deal ; but we have something for our money. They 
do not jar upon our aesthetic feelings by their dirt and 
disorder, by their want of polish, uncouth manners, 



22 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and pig-headed obstinacy. They have been trained 
in the traditions of service, and their bearing is seemly. 
No doubt a wide margin for improvement is still left,, 
and, just because there are differences to be adjusted, 
a glimpse at foreign domestic life may not be without 
interest to Englishwomen. 

As for the German Hausfrau, she must, I think, 
feel envious sometimes at the blissful ideal suggested 
by those curt sentences of the Roman centurion, 
whose boast it was that he said to one 6 Go,' and he 
went, and to another ' Come/ and he came, and to his 
servant, ' Do this/ and he did it. To say to a German 
servant ' Come 9 is like pulling a pig by its tail ; she 
will immediately rush in a contrary direction. And 
be sure that, though you may have said to her f Do 
this ' three hundred and sixty-four times during the 
year, if you omit to say it the three hundred and 
sixty-fifth, she will be certain, as Dickens said, to find 
' a way how NOT to do it/ 



23 



CHAPTER II. 

FURNITURE. 
£ I sing the Sofa.' — Coivfier. 

SPEAKING roughly, one would say that German fur- 
niture was chiefly conspicuous by its absence ; but, 
upon ' nearer view,' it has other characteristics which 
justify us in giving it its due modicum of considera- 
tion ; especially if we take the word in its larger 
sense, not merely as signifying tables and chairs, 
beds and sofas, but as concerning all the parapher- 
nalia of living. 

And, firstly, as regards the houses and their in- 
terior arrangements. These, of course, vary consi- 
derably in different parts of Germany ; but in one 
respect they are invariable : every house is divided 
into flats, with a common staircase for all the occu- 
pants, and a common door. As a rule, the old 
houses, standing in streets and squares, have solid 
thick walls and ample landing-places ; whilst in the 
modern villa, built in the environs, you will find a 
maximum of lath and plaster and a minimum of 
brick and stone. In the old houses you will find the 
admirable Berliner Ofen ; in the modern ones iron 
abominations, whereof more anon. In the town you 



24 



will suffer greatly from the street drains, as well as 
from defective arrangements in this respect within 
your own borders ; in the villa you will probably 
have only the latter inconvenience to endure, and as 
you will have a small garden, and foliage about you, 
the result will probably be less disastrous than in the 
town. The common hall (in old houses this is spa- 
cious, flagged with stones, and the door will be a 
porte coclicrc) is entered by the common door, which 
hangs upon the hinge, and through which, in cold 
weather, the air rushes with an icy blast, chilling the 
very bones and marrow, whilst the banging to and 
fro, that goes on all day, is a source fruitful of misery 
to persons afflicted with nerves. Every comer and 
goer lets it swing against the lock ; no one takes the 
trouble to open or shut it, and thus, at last, you come 
to curse the compromise, and to wish they would set 
the huge machines open, as is the case in summer, 
and have mercy on your head. 

You mount to the first floor. In some houses 
you will find a grille, and against the wall is a neat 
little white porcelain plate, with the name of the 
tenant in black letters, so that you will at once be 
aware vv r hether you have come to the right i flat.' 
The higher you mount, the lower will be the rents, 
until at length you reach the Bodcn, or loft, which is 
divided into servants' sleeping-places, Waschkammern, 
and palisaded store-rooms ; the centre of the Boden 
is common property, and in wet weather is used as a 
drying-ground, when it is a matter of some arrange- 
ment and not a little diplomacy to satisfy the re- 
quirements of all the families dwelling beneath the 



FURNITURE. 



25 



common roof. To an Englishman, whose house is 
his castle, who probably lives and dies without know- 
ing or caring to know the name of his next-door 
neighbour, this system of dwelling in flats is emi- 
nently distasteful. We have seen how Gretchen from 
No. 1 flat scandalises Katchen from No. 2 ditto, as to 
the sensational details revealed by the faithful Lina 
from No. 3 opposite ; and we know how, after seven 
in the evening, the same devoted domestics will be 
lounging, stocking in hand, in doorways, or lurking 
with the Brautigam of the moment in the garden, 
enjoying the sequel of what was so pleasantly com- 
menced on the market during morning hours. 

As you enter the door and ascend the staircase, 
you will at once see evidences of discomfort in the 
sloppiness of the stairs. The system of laying water 
on, as with us, is only now struggling into feeble 
existence in Germany, and is only applicable in 
newly-built houses, so that the well of your staircase 
is literally a well, up and down which buckets are 
going all day long. Mina and Lina have to fetch 
every drop of water for the family ablutions, for 
cooking and drinking purposes, from the Brunnen in 
the courtyard, or across the street, or perhaps in a 
neighbour's garden, and the labour and discomfort 
entailed by this primitive state of things is incalcul- 
able. It also leads to an economy of water which, to 
a person not afflicted with hydrophobia, is trying in 
the extreme. It is scarcely a wonder, when we think 
of this, that baths and tubs should not enter into the 
scheme of bedroom arrangements, and that in Ger- 
many all personal ablutions, on a large scale, should 



26 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



be undertaken out of the house at the public baths. 
The tenant on the ground floor is supposed to keep 
the Haiisflicr in order ; he who dwells above hirn to 
provide for the cleansing of the stairs leading from 
the first flat to the house door, and so on up to the 
topmost dwelling ; but it will be readily understood 
that the slopping of buckets up and down the stair- 
case all day long, though it may not come under the 
4 head of i dirt ' proper, certainly does come under that 
of discomfort, and is destructive of all appearance of 
care and order. 

Having found your friends by the porcelain plate, 
you will enter the drawing-room. As a rule, this will 
not be carpeted, but the floor will be stained a dark 
colour, and there will be small pieces of carpet, 
seldom of the same pattern, spread in different 
corners of the room. In some houses the floors are 
parqueted (a fashion now becoming popular in Eng- 
land, w T hen expense is a secondary consideration), the 
inlaid w T ood forming diamonds or squares, or some 
other simple design. In princely houses great luxury 
is shown in this item ; the parqueting becomes a work 
of art, and exquisite bouquets of flowers in coloured 
woods, forming the centre of medallions, connected 
by trellis-work, polished to a high degree, form a 
splendid parade-ground for the capering of dancers. 
But to return to a humbler sphere. On the rugs cr 
squares of carpet, of which mention has been made, 
there will be a table, and behind the table, invariably, 
a sofa. This is the place of honour, and should no 
person of higher rank than your own be present, you 
will be invited to take your place thereon. I have 



FURNITURE. 



27 



often been amused watching the * sofa comedy/ when 
perhaps a lady of higher rank than she who is already 
seated upon it arrives on the scene. The ' second 
lady' at once rises, and prepares to ' efface ' herself; 
the ' first lady ' smiles deprecatingly, and begs her to 
be seated, with a i Bitte, bitte 9 which is infinitely 
condescending ; but the second lady is almost hurt 
that it could be supposed such ignorance of the 
bienscances is hers, and her ' Aber, Excellenz ! ' has 
something almost appealing in its remonstrance. 
But I was ' singing the Sofa,' and must apologise for 
the episodical. On the table there will be a gay- 
coloured cloth, and, perhaps, a damask napkin placed 
diamond-wise in anticipation of the coming coffee ; 
but there will be no books or work upon it ; no pho- 
tographs, or magazines, or newspapers, or sketch- 
books about the room ; and as you glance furtively 
around you will be able to draw no inferences or con- 
clusions as to the characteristics of its fair occupants. 
It will have no distinctive physiognomy of its own, 
showing you that Corinna has the poetic mind, or 
Angela the painters hand, whilst little Dorcas's 
benevolence is evinced by her work-basket overflow- 
ing with flannel and calico. You will see no traces 
of present occupation about the place, unless it be 
that a stocking, in course of knitting, lies on the sofa- 
cushion. Should you have been long a sojourner in 
the land, the click of the knitting-needles will not 
improbably suggest to your mind reminiscences of 
the ' clack ' that too often accompanies it in the 
afternoon Kaffecn. Near the window there will pro- 
bably be a writing-table surrounded by a screen of 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



trellis-work, or covered with an arch, over which ivy 
has been trained — ivy so dark and so dismal, so 
loudly telling of want of sun and air, that it will 
rather have a depressing than an enlivening effect 
on the ensemble of the room — and there will be an 
india-rubber plant or two, and a few bits of greenery 
in pots, but for gorgeous geraniums, bright cal- 
ceolarias, sweet verbenas, brilliant petunias, you 
must not look. Gardening is an art but little cul- 
tivated, and to waste money on what will fade in 
a week, and have to be renewed all the summer 
through, if your room is to look bright and its glories 
to remain undimmed, is a folly of which no well- 
regulated Hausfrau would be guilty. The German 
loves flowers, it is true, but they must cost him no- 
thing. The rich merchants of Altona and Frankfort 
emulate the glories of our English gardens, but rich 
merchants will everywhere be luxurious ; and, in the 
good old gambling days of Baden, Homburg, and 
Wiesbaden gay parterres pleased the eye in public 
gardens ; but gardening is as yet in its infancy in 
the Fatherland, and nursery-gardens, hot-houses, and 
green-houses, as we know them, still luxuries of the 
future. The chairs in the drawing-room, from which 
we have for a moment strayed, will be miscellaneous 
as to pattern and stiff as to arrangement ; there will be 
a good deal of - bent wood ' and wicker-work. Much 
of the furniture will be covered with wool-work, and 
about the room you will see evidences of the industry 
of ladies of the house, in bead mats, knitted and 
crocheted antimacassars, elaborate footstools, and 
bright-coloured etageres. The portieres which pro- 



FURNITURE. 



29 



bably drape the doors of communication with the 
other apartments will perhaps also be gorgeous with 
Berlin wool-work borders ; but there will be little 
harmony, and no happy results, in these patchy contri- 
butions of affection. There being no chimney-piece, 
the somewhat monotonous adornment of the gilt 
clock and candelabra which unfailingly ornament 
French salons will be wanting, but there will be a 
Schrank or two (a sort of cabinet), with glass doors, 
through which you may peer at the treasures within. 
On its shelves you will see a few china cups and 
saucers, a handsome beer-flagon, a kaleidoscope 
letter-weight, a card-dish, a confirmation plate, a 
spare sugar-basin, a few old jugs, ornaments of birth- 
day cakes ; que sais-je ? — all those useless and trou- 
blesome trifles which a family gathers as the years 
roll on. On the wall there will, almost invariably, be 
one spot, which from a distance looks like an astrono- 
mical system, but which upon inspection proves to be 
a collection of the family photographs, stars of greater 
and lesser magnitude, hung close together in black 
oval frames (gilt tarnishes, costs more originally, has 
to be renewed, is subject to the flies) ; the husbands 
and wives sitting hand in hand, the young men in 
uniform in fine military position, the maidens in their 
best clothes, looking highly demure and very much 
alike. 

You will seldom find water-colour sketches or oil- 
paintings adorning the walls of the dining-room, nor 
will it afford you fine engravings after the Landseers, 
the Millais, the Bonheurs, or the Wilkies of Germany. 
It will be a room bare of all ornament and destitute 



3? 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of all attraction : it will do to feed in, as the chairs 
will do to sit on, and that is all. A common table 
without any cloth, a floor without any carpet, windows 
without even the ivy and india-rubber plants, will 
produce a frugality of aspect that verges on the sor- 
did ; the noise of footsteps coming and going on the 
bare boards will strike a knell of remorse into your 
bosom, as you think of all the Turkey carpets over 
which you have passed with indifference during earlier 
portions of your pilgrimage, and you will hasten on to 
the sanctum sanctorum of the master of the house. 
It smells strongly of tobacco, but for this you are 
prepared. Have you not seen, lurking behind the 
drawing and dining room stoves, spittoons of china and 
spittoons of brass ? You have given a little shudder, 
but you have recovered yourself, and have borne 
yourself gallantly, not wishing to appear over ' nice/ 
There will be an arm-chair or two in the master's 
room, and a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers perhaps, 
and a sofa covered with American leather ; and there 
will be whips and spurs, and guns and gloves, a 
Schlafrock, and a pair of Berlin wool-work slippers, a 
beer flagon or two, a Joppc, a stand full of pipes, 
endless contrivances for the reception of cigars, 
such as dog-kennels, pigeon-cotes, Swiss chalets, and 
beer-barrels ; and AscJibecken innumerable, bead 
penwipers, and blotting-books of velvet, silk, and 
gold ; embroidered card-cases, gay smoking-caps, 
cross-stitch carpet-bags, testify to the affection with 
which the head of the house is regarded by his 
woman-kind. 

In this apartment you will recognise the advan- 



FURNITURE. 



3i 



tages of carpetless floors and light window-curtains, 
and you will especially appreciate the delightful win- 
dows which by a simple contrivance open outwards 
like folding-doors, saving all necessity for calling a 
servant, or bringing yourself to the brink of apoplexy 
by endeavouring to heave upwards the heavy sash. 
By turning a handle you lift the centre bolt out of the 
deep hole into which it falls, and the two battants 
swing asunder with charming ease. There is often a 
deep window-sill, upon which it is pleasant to lounge ; 
and where this is the case wool-work cushions fitting 
squarely into the niches will afford you pleasant sup- 
port, so that you may lean there by the hour, nor 
have cause to ruefully rub your elbows when you tire 
of the far niente. A less commendable custom is that 
of having two bits of looking-glass, fixed at a certain 
angle, just outside the drawing-room window, whereby 
you see not only the traffic of the road, but are 
enabled to spy out all the incomings and outgoings of 
your neighbours — to watch who comes to the door ; 
to know r who the A.'s parterre are entertaining, &c. &c. 

But whilst I am on the subject of windows I must 
notp a contrivance which called forth my lasting ad- 
miration and gratitude so often as I made use of it. 
In every room you will find one window w r ith a 
movable pane. Looking more nearly at the squares 
of glass, you will see a small button attached to one ; 
turn it, and behold the magic pane moves on its 
hinges, and two feet square of fresh air are let in upon 
you. Can anything be more delightful ? You do not 
want the roaring blast to be admitted through twelve 
feet by six of window, blowing the curtains and news- 



32 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



papers and work materials wildly about the room, as 
though a hurricane raged amongst your properties ; 
but you do want that pleasant and wholesome breath 
of freshness which will circulate softly through your 
apartment, dispersing your vapeurs noircs and relieving 
your brain of the weight and fulness superinduced by 
the heavy stove atmosphere. The welcome oxygen 
will brighten your 1 blues,' dispel your gathering ill- 
humour, and cause the thickened blood to circulate 
less sluggishly. Your lips, which were dry, will smile 
again, your tongue, which was parched, will now wag 
freely, and you will take up the business you had in 
hand with renewed spirit. I wish that (in these days 
when everything is done by co-operation) the influen- 
tial body of German residents in England would form 
an association for the construction of these delightful 
windows ; a few native workmen could set the thing 
going, and artisans enough would soon be found to 
carry on the simple trade. It would confer an ines- 
timable boon upon all householders, and would win 
the gratitude of many a room-ridden wretch. It is 
true that our open fire-places promote the circulation 
of air in our houses, yet often a moderate breath of 
that which is absolutely fresh from without would be 
of infinite service to us ;. more especially to those 
toilers at the desk whose nerves stand often so sorely 
in need of this gentle stimulant, and whose brains 
would be all the lighter for a promoted circulation. 
To the sick-room, to the invalid who is 6 delicate/ and 
would shrink from the draught of a whole window,, 
the movable pane would be panacea. By a natural 
transition we turn from the window to the stove. 

It is a proverb in Germany, that in Russia you 



FURNITURE. 



33 



only see the cold, whereas in Germany you feel it. 
In palaces, it is true,- the system of warming by 
Russian flues .is much adopted, so that an equal tempe- 
rature prevails in the halls, galleries, and staircases ; 
but such arrangements cannot be carried out in - home 
life.' Fuel is immensely expensive in Germany, and 
is becoming more so every year. Formerly, in good 
houses, nothing but wood was burnt, but for this 
the old-fashioned Berliner Kachelofen was necessary, 
and the hardest beechwood indispensable. This kind 
of stove resembles a huge monument, and is built 
(of a great thickness) of a sort of concrete, composed 
of clay and gypsum, the outside glazed with white 
porcelain : the interior is so contrived that the heat 
passes slowly through endless circumvolutory valves, 
by degrees warming the whole mass. The interior 
of the stove, preparatory to heating, is well piled up 
with wood, a strong draught is created, and when the 
logs are reduced to ashes, a handle is turned in the 
wall of the stove, a little door is drawn over the 
grating at its mouth, and the draught being thus cut 
off, the heated air remains imprisoned in the Ofen y 
w r hich will keep warm for many hours, and to the 
remotest corner of the room an equalised heat will 
result. The drawback to this arrangement lies in the 
fact that, if the escape valves be closed too soon, the 
fumes of charcoal will pass into the room, and in a 
sleeping apartment the danger of asphyxiation is 
great. During very cold weather such casualties are 
by no means uncommon, especially among the lower 
orders, who, unwilling to waste any of the heat, are 
sometimes tempted to close the escape valves too 

D 



34 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



soon, and retiring to rest early, reap the consequences 
of their fatal economy. But the cast-iron stove fre- 
quently replaces in modern houses our solid old friend 
the Berliner Ofeu. These cast-iron stoves are un- 
healthy, hideous, and unpleasant, whilst their ' ineffec- 
tual fires ' alternately scorch and choke you. They 
produce a furnace-like heat, affecting taste, smell, and 
sight, the unpleasant consequences of which are but 
very slightly counteracted by the vessel of water 
which you are advised to keep constantly boiling 
on the hottest part of the iron. When the water 
boils, the steam which passes into the room slightly 
relieves one from the distressing sensations produced 
by the dry heat ; but the moment the fire goes out 
the iron becomes cold, and the temperature at once 
sinks to as many degrees below, as it was half-an-hour 
ago above, zero. Wood cannot be burned in these 
stoves, as it would flare away too quickly without, as 
in the case of the Berliner Of en, leaving any genial 
warmth behind ; so coal or peat, or a mixture of 
both, is employed, producing results disastrous to 
cleanliness. The thick brown smoke puffs out into 
the room, and the muslin curtains look grimy as soon 
as put up. Some of my old-fashioned friends used to 
declare that the expense of washing counterbalanced 
the cheapest kind of fuel, and they stuck to their 
concrete stoves with conservative affection. In some 
modern houses the Berlin stove will have an opening 
like an English fire-place, but this is confessedly a 
luxury, a concession to the eye, for the real business 
is done by the useful concrete at the back. It is 
almost superfluous to observe how much work is 
saved to servants by this institution of stoves, No 



FURNITURE. 



35 



bright grates, no polished steel fenders and fire-irons 
and ormulu ; no black-lead mysteries, no rotten-stone 
and emery paper, and chamois leather. The wood is 
shoved in and piled up, a light is set to it, the flames 
go roaring upwards, the handle is presently turned, 
and the room will keep warm for the next eight or 
ten hours. 

Let us next penetrate, so far as may be permis- 
sible, into the bedrooms of the family ; or, at least, 
let us take one of them. And here, more especially, 
will dismay fall upon your insular senses. Where is 
the mahogany or maple, or the pretty light polished 
wood, or the delicate enamelled ditto ; where the 
ample wardrobe, with its long panels of looking-glass, 
cedar shelves, drawers that slide noiselessly in and 
out, and various convenient contrivances ? Where 
the solid chest of drawers, with marble tops ? — the 
pretty white toilet covers, and polished handles ? 
Where is the obligatory washstand, with its vast ewers 
and basins (only to gaze at which is refreshment), 
the china matching your chintz or curtains, and con- 
trasting well with the cool marble slabs, on which 
stand your water-bottles and glasses, and sponges, 
and brushes ? Where are the baths ? Where the 
japanned pails, the water cans, the bath towels ? My 
friends, let us not look for these things. Has it not 
been written how Mina and Lina labour at the well ? 
are there not plenty of public baths, better than all 
your private scrubbings and tubbings ? But indeed 
to such prudishness has the 1 prunes and prisms ' pro- 
gramme of propriety reduced the orthodox German 
lady that she considers it indecent to let a bath be 

D 2 



36 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



seen in her apartment, where a wash-hand basin is 
only suffered under protest, and does its best to pass 
unnoticed by shrinking bashfully into the most 
modest proportions. Side by side stand two little 
beds. You wonder, as you look at them, how people 
cast in the heroic mould double up their joints so 
as to fit into these liliputian receptacles. You think 
vaguely that it would not be well to be sick of 
a fever in such a bed. There is a huge wedge or 
sloping mountain of horsehair at the head of each 
couch, and on the top of it are two vast pillows, so 
that lying down seems an impossibility ; and this may 
account for the shortness of the general contrivances. 
There will be a good spring mattress with a horsehair 
one atop of it, the sheets will not be tucked in, the 
quilted coverlet will be scanty in its proportions. To 
one not to the manner born it is detestable ; and not 
less so to have piled on the top of you an immense 
filumeaiL, or bag stuffed with down, under which you 
will groan and perspire until suffocation causes you ta 
fling it off in your sleep. You will awake again pre- 
sently, very chilly, the miserable mockery of a quilt 
lying upon the ground beside the voluminous phi- 
meau, and your night will be spent in alternately 
casting off and gleaning together again your bed fur- 
niture. Each time you turn in your sleep you will 
feel the cold air rushing in on all sides, and a confused 
nightmare sense of avalanches, waterfalls, and glaciers, 
according to how the plumeatt falls, the coverlet glides, 
and the sheets resolve themselves into rope, will make 
your night hideous. The result of which will be, if you 
are abiding within those borders, that you will forthwith 



FURNITURE. 



37 



send for a carpenter and order a bed according to 
your dimensions, with blankets and sheets that will 
tuck in, and a pillow which will not persist in prop- 
ping you up at an angle of forty-five. 

The barely necessary (according to the German 
ideas of necessity) is all that you must hope to find 
in the sleeping apartments. Frugality, the alpha and 
omega of German home life, forbids even the tin-tacks 
and the pink lining for which you would fain bargain. 
' Why should one spend money on marble and 
mahogany when delf and deal will do as well ? ' a 
matron remonstrated : ' it is not necessary that I 
should see the length of my petticoats, the sweep of 
my train, the dimensions of my pouf, in a long glass. 
I can look at myself just as well in a little mirror set 
upon a chest of drawers, as in a fine toilet glass, 
draped in lace and muslin. No woman's face is more 
than a foot square ; and why should I squander my 
husband's substance in tin-tacks and pink lining ? The 
lace and the muslin cost money to wash, a woman's 
wage, a woman's food ; the pink lining will fade, it 
must be renewed. My chest of painted drawers does 
just as well as your frivolous dressing-table, with its 
frippery and finery, and china pots and ring-stands 
and smelling-bottles ; they (the drawers) require no 
washing or ironing or starching ; and, after all, who 
would there be to see it? No one but my husband, 
who would scold me well, and never cease grumbling 
at my extravagance. Dark window-blinds, well- 
covered cotton curtains, a strip of bedside carpet, and 
a few chairs are enough for anyone's wants ; so come 
away and look at the kitchen.' 



33 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



The kitchen is a small bare room with a brick or 
concrete floor ; no oil-cloth or cocoa-nut matting, no 
carpet, no pretence at comfort. You wonder how all 
the routine of cookery and scullery can be carried on 
in it. The copper pans on shelf and peg shine warm 
and bright from the walls ; the window is clean ; and 
buckets full of water, with a large brass water-scoop, 
show that all is ready for the day's operations. The 
mere cooking is far more easily accomplished in a 
German than in an English household. The hot- 
metal plates, provided with numerous circular holes, 
into which rings can be fitted, or from which they can 
be hooked out, to suit the exigencies of the various 
pots and pans, accommodate any number of kettles 
or stewpans. These stand simmering, boiling, or stew- 
ing, according to their position, and are plunged 
into the circular holes by which they come nearer to 
the fire when accelerated speed is desirable. The 
servant has here again a vast amount of labour saved 
her ; not only that she has no hearth-stoning, fender- 
polishing, or black-leading to accomplish, but that 
she can get at all her plats readily, without burning 
her face and hands, or straining her muscles, as with 
us, by stretching over a wide hearth in front of a 
scorching fire, to the detriment alike of her clothes, 
health, and temper. I may mention that drunkenness 
is quite unknown amongst female servants in Germany, 
and one cannot help feeling that a great deal has 
been done for them by this contrivance of the hot- 
metal plates. 

Knowing the value of fuel, and the extreme fru- 
gality which is observed in all households as to this 



FURNITURE. 



39 



most expensive item of domestic economy, a Ger- 
man servant will give you no trouble in the matter. 
Having heated the water for your early coffee (a mere 
handful of firing has been necessary for this), she 
allows the flame to die out. She will draw the few 
living embers to the mouth of the grating in the hot- 
plate, and lay a piece of peat upon them before she 
goes out to market. When she returns, a few puffs of 
breath blow the smouldering heap into life, and her 
saucepans will soon be boiling in merry concert. The 
moment dinner is over she will fill every available 
vessel with water, so that she has a supply sufficiently 
warm to wash up with, and the fire again dies down. 
It has to be lighted for supper, but the same frugal 
rule is observed, and as the hot-plate affords no 
w^armth beyond that immediately beneath the sauce- 
pans, there is no temptation to make a larger fire ; 
nor do I remember, in a single instance, having had 
to remonstrate as to waste of fuel. 

Whilst still on the subject of stoves, let me say 
that I never dressed for a ball without recognising 
the comfort and safety of the institution. No scorch- 
ing of the face, no catching fire of frills and furbelows, 
no danger or detriment from sparks or hearth-dust ; 
and, as a mother, I must confess that I was saved 
many a heart-pang by the (almost) impossibility of 
the children doing mischief by playing with the fire. 
On the other hand, one is not going to a ball every 
evening, nor are maternal feelings always in the ascen- 
dant ; and often during the long winter nights — nights 
that begin at 3.30 and go on indefinitely — I have 
longed, with a hungry longing, for the friendly face 



40 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and the cheerful companionship of an English open 
fire. 

From the foregoing it will be readily understood 
that there is little quiet and no privacy in a German 
* flat.' The rooms all communicate one with another ; 
you cannot reach the drawing without going through 
the dining-room ; your own apartment will perhaps 
be the via media to the nursery, so that you seem to 
live in a passage. The smoke from your husband's 
sanctum will filter through into your bedroom ; and 
as to 4 lying down ' and petting a headache, you know 
better than to attempt such things. Nevertheless the 
system has its advantages, and one feels horribly lazy 
when one returns to the ups and downs of an English 
house. 

The large, lofty, carpetless rooms are pleasant and 
cool in summer, when the dust that prevails would 
make carpets almost unbearable ; but in winter the 
absence of the open fire and the furnished floors gives 
life an altogether bleak aspect. I am amused and 
pleased to see many pretty German contrivances and 
customs becoming so popular in England. The double 
dishes for cutlets and vegetables, for fruit and cakes, 
are old familiar friends, and inestimable comforts 
where high tea is the order of the day, and where 
people are not too proud to help each other and 
themselves. The long cloaks lined with squirrel, 
the footsacks and fur collars so much in use, all come 
from Germany ; the Norfolk shooting-coat is but 
an Anglicised Joppe, and the origin of the Ulster is 
purely and simply German. 

There are other subjects upon which, in writing of 



FURNITURE. 



41 



German home life, I would fain speak, but that, as 
Mrs. Malaprop says, I fear to offend against the ' pro- 
perties.' A severe sanitary commission is urgently 
required to look into these matters, and more energetic 
legislation than has yet been brought to bear upon 
them is absolutely necessary if the disastrous effects 
of culpable neglect are to be in some degree counter- 
acted. Why should typhus fever be a sort of peren- 
nial epidemic in most German towns ? Why, when 
you hear of the death of the young, the strong, 
and the lovely, should the almost invariable answer to 
your question be, ' Sie (er) ist am Typhus gestorben ? ' 
The answer, alas ! lies miserably near ; at their feet, 
beneath their noses. It is a plague-spot which re- 
quires no great amount of science to uproot ; but the 
abstract has charms for the German mind, which the 
concrete can never possess ; and whilst their learned 
men are writing treatises about ' germ diseases,' de- 
fective drainage is slaying, like Saul, its tens of 
thousands unhindered. We have seen by the mortal 
illness of one, and the sickness unto death of another, 
of our own Princes, that the subtle poison, and the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness, spares those born 
in the purple and dwelling in palaces as little as the 
peasant in his hut or the artisan in his alley, and the 
lesson has not been entirely lost upon us. 

Some time ago, when railway accidents were rife, 
it was said that an archbishop must be killed before 
any notice could be taken of the disasters by rail : we 
have descended lower in the scale now, and only ask for 
the death of a director. Archbishops are not at a pre- 
mium in Germany ; but I doubt if even the death of 



42 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



a Bismarck or a Moltke would set their fellow-country- 
men to cleansing drains and flushing sewers, unless 
under severe compulsion. It has been computed that 
it w r ould cost fabulous millions to attempt to make 
Berlin a healthily habitable city, and that after the 
millions had been spent the result would be still 
problematical. That may be so ; it is probably dif- 
ficult to efficiently drain a city situated in a vast 
plain ; but in the meantime the decencies of life, the 
comfort, the safety, the self-respect, of home life, are. 
calling out for a change, so that avoidable disease 
and death should stalk no longer amongst the people.. 
With every year fresh victims fall to this ignoble foe, 
and the hot summer sun shines down in deadly- 
beauty on festering heaps of corruption and on hideous 
cesspools unheeded. 

In this chapter I have strictly confined myself to 
home life. I have not spoken of the life of capitals, 
where the haute noblesse and the haute finance, bankers,, 
speculators, merchants of colossal fortunes, make life 
pretty much what they will. I have spoken of the 
ordinary life of ordinary Germans, such as you will 
find it to be in fifty towns, or in ten times fifty, if 
you have time to visit them. I have spoken of the 
households of military men — generals, colonels, majors 
— of those of the petite noblesse ; of the higher civil 
employes — judges, councillors, assessors, &c. — and, men- 
tally, I have compared them with the homes pf the 
upper middle classes of England ; not those house- 
holds where expense is a matter of no moment. I 
have had in mind such arrangements and such furni- 
ture, and such simple refinements, as belong to our 



FURNITURE. 



43 



ordinary middle class, where a certain moderate ease 
and careful cleanliness give a grace to existence, and 
lead one to think that the well-chosen furniture and 
simple luxuries are in some sort the interpretations 
of the mind that orders and the hand that guides. 

' You make existence too elaborate/ said a Ger- 
man lady to me one day, and she looked round my 
room, simple almost to penuriousness (I had been 
doing battle for my tin-tacks and pink lining) ; ■ all 
these things make a fuss ; they are irksome, and they 
are unpractical. My strip of bedside carpet is better 
than your square of Brussels. I get a pair of felt 
slippers and don't feel my bare boards ; you spend I 
don't know how many Thaler on your carpet, and 
you give a servant work to brush it, and it harbours 
dust, and it wears out, while my felt slippers are still 
good ; or, if they are getting thin, I can buy a pair in 
the next street for ten Groschen! 

4 But I like to have my household gods about me,' 
I pleaded, in defence of my little arrangements ; ' I 
always have my carpets taken up in summer ; mean- 
while the " daily beauty" of life is worth something. 
Does not my Clytie (which only cost two shillings), 
up above my chamber door, delight me ? And that 
sturdy Italian peasant woman, with her grand pose, 
liberal life, massive figure, and all the glow of the 
South in her face : what does not she recall ? Whole 
volumes of the poets ; a thousand personal matters 
and memories — the Corso, the Campagna, the Co- 
liseum, the Carnival, Easter Day — things that come 
and go, and belong to one's life. And that peep at 
the Cumberland lakes is good. One wanders off, in 



44 



fancy, with Wordsworth and Southey ; one hears the 
bleating of the sheep, the falling of waters, the song 
of birds ; old poems and songs rise up in one's 
mind ; the mist begins to fall, and lo ! we are up in 
the clouds (where else should poets be ?), and are 
putting on our waterproofs and looking for our flasks. 
Poor things, madam, but mine own. My sister 
painted the Roman peasant for me (I think of her 
when I gaze upon the stalwart matron, and of all that 
is come and gone since then). I bought my Clytie in 
Bloomsbury, just outside the Museum, and its true 
" great Catholic Dome," of a lazy Italian fellow, with 
glowing eyes, saucy white teeth, and velvet cap with 
smart blue velvet tassel. London smoke was dear to 
me, Hebe Helmine, at that stage of my existence, and 
I declare I smell it now every time I look at my 
Clytie. Is not that view of the silver Thames sweet 
and sylvan ? Just like a little bit of Spenser or 
Milton. That old French street and tower are written 
on the tablets of life, and that mystic Mentonese 
olive-tree. They have all their associations and 
memories ; some sweet, some bitter ; but are not 
most lives chiefly memory ? And a softened sadness 
comes over us amongst such simple relics as these, 
and we cease to beat our wings against the bars/ 
But Helmine's solid sense was in nowise shaken by 
my piteous little rhapsody. She simply 'wondered 
at ' me, like Gawain, and shaking her head half in 
pity, half in condemnation, at the aberration of my 
energies, went off to see to the slavey and the Sauer- 
kraut, and to knit the stocking of virtue. 

' Then have you never seen a beautiful German 



FURNITURE, 



45 



house ? ' I shall be asked. Yes, indeed. Can I 
ever forget that boudoir where I sat upon a sofa and 
gazed in speechless awe at the looking-glasses, ample 
and many, wreathed with priceless Dresden china 
blossoms ; at the chandelier which was of the same 
costly clay, and which looked as though Flora her- 
self had flung the flowers down from Parnassus ? Can 
I ever forget the marvellous 4 old Dresden ' in which 
tea was served to me, the candlesticks, the picture- 
frames, the brackets, the cabinet full of shepherdesses 
and their swains, of coquettish babes in mobcaps, and 
dandy darlings in breeches and ruffles, and peach- 
coloured coats a revers f Everything in the room 
had been presented by an adoring husband on succes- 
sive birthdays ; and the result was positively bewil- 
dering to an ordinary mortal. And memory multiplies 
many such charming interiors, but still they are the 
exception, not the rule, as indeed luxury must be, all 
the world over. Vieux Saxe would be very much out 
of place in the simple home life of which I have under- 
taken to speak. 

Without delighting in tables and chairs, or in any 
way subscribing to the furniture fetish, I think we 
must all admit the value and interest of people's sur- 
roundings, in so far as they are expressive of indi- 
viduality. Furniture has its own physiognomy ; it 
tells the turn of Virginia's temper and the bent of 
Paul's mind. It is not splendour or outlay that we 
miss in average German rooms ; we miss the in- 
dividual mind, the finer shades of character which 
our friends' surroundings ought to convey — the book 
that betrays, the sketch which suggests, the flower 



4 6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



which recalls. All these speak to us in a 6 little 
language ' of their own — in the phraseology of inti- 
macy. We look for some expression of the spirit that 
presides, rules, makes itself felt ; we feel as though an 
appearance of hospitality were cheating us of our 
due ; we are admitted to the material ; we sit upon 
the chairs, and we eat off the table, and we warm our- 
selves at the stove, but yet we are chilled, and hungry 
and thirsty : the spiritual is denied to us ; all the 
ordinary occupations of life, all the loves, and the 
weaknesses, and the enthusiasms, and the follies are 
put away ; we gaze round seeking what manner of 
man or woman this may be, and we fall back dis- 
pirited on the bare boards and the beadwork. In 
another chapter I hope to speak more fully on the 
subject ; here it would be out of place ; it is only 
admissible in so far as the singularly inexpressive 
aspect of most German interiors betrays a phase of 
German character. Much learning, words of wisdom, 
intellectual intercourse of the highest nature, may 
sanctify these simple homes, but to many such things 
are too high, they cannot attain unto them. It is not 
the intellect that is starved, it is the heart that 
hungers. We do not care so much about what our 
friends think, as about what they feel ; little touches 
of tenderness, a pressure of the hand, a whispered 
word, a glance that but swept you with its sympathy, 
these are things that you will remember, and which 
will keep your heart warm, long after you have 
groaned out your vanitas vanitatitm with the wisest 
man that ever lived. The lovable side of a woman's 
character is not revealed in a German drawing-room. 



FURNITURE. 



47 



It is not that poverty forbids, but that parsimony 
denies. The utile leaves little space for the dolce in 
her thoughts and sympathies. The word ' aesthetic,' 
coined by Baumgarten to express generally a feeling 
for the fine arts, is for ever on the lips of his fellow- 
countrymen, but finds no expression in their lives. 
'Beauty? Association?' said Helmine. ' Education of 
the eye ? Form ? Harmony ? these things are non- 
sense in everyday life. Think of the time the 
knickknacks take to dust, to arrange ; you must keep 
an extra servant to do it. Art is all very well in 
its proper place ; that is acknowledged. Are not 
all our galleries free, and cannot I have beauty, valued 
at hundreds of thousands of Thaler, by turning round 
the corner of the next street, where there is one of 
the finest collections in the world ? If you had a sale, 
who would buy these worthless imitations ? Why 
waste your money ? ' No doubt she was right : she 
was a clever woman ; but it will be seen by this that 
our German friends mostly seek their art like their 
bath — out of the house. 



4 3 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



CHAPTER III. 

FOOD. 

'L'appetit vient en mangeant.' — Rabelais. 

Who sent the food, and who the cooks, is a matter of 
history. A good cook is the Black Swan of domestic 
life ; she is an epoch, an era ; we date from her ; we 
are ready to write her name in gold and sardonyx on 
sandalwood. 1 That was when Jane Stubbs was cook/ 
we say, and memory casts a fond halo over the feats 
of that female cordon bleu. 

Fate has been kind to France in the matter of 
cooks ; French men and women are born with gastro- 
nomic and culinary perceptions. Given the poorest 
materials, they will produce a palatable and whole- 
some dish, at once appetising and nourishing. ' In 
France we dine,' said an obliging Frenchman sitting 
next to me at a German table d'hote. ' In Germany 
they feed.' 

' And. in England, w T hat do you do there ? ' asked 
a somewhat splenetic German relative, to whom, in an 
unwary moment, I had quoted the above epigrammatic 
remark. ' I will tell you, meine Beste. You boil your 
vegetables in water, much water, and eat grass like 



FOOD. 



49 



Nebuchadnezzar. You know one meat, the biftek, 
bleeding ; and one Mehlspeise, the blom-budding/ 

I confess, being far from home and all its pleasures, 
the sarcastic enumeration of the delights of our insular 
table wounded me, and I lifted my voice in feeble 
protest. But let this criticism temper the steel of our 
pen, and put a little milk and honey into the ink of 
our observations. 

It was said by one of the ancients (I think Tacitus 
in his ' Germania ') that the Teutons were distinguished 
by having the largest volume of intestines of all the 
peoples of Europe (I feel a certain hesitation in 
quoting these words, which, writ in elegant Latin, 
might pass muster) ; but certainly no one who has 
lived in Germany can aver that the modern Teuton 
has degenerated from his ancestors in powers of ab- 
sorption. Take, for instance, the everyday experience 
of a table d'hote, where gentle and simple means are 
gathered together, and where the manners of the ma- 
jority will impress themselves on the mind of the im- 
partial spectator. Quantity, not quality, appears to 
be the motto of the repast. To eat, if possible, twice 
of every dish, to splutter over the soup, to seize the 
sauce en passant, to perform tricks of knife-jugglery 
that might strike awe into the breast of a Japanese 
adept; to lap up the gravy, to drink salad-dressing 
off knife-blades, to scour the inside of the dish and 
platter with lumps of bread, to swallow breathlessly r 
and after a fashion that somehow suggests the swal- 
lowing is a mere preliminary operation, presently to 
be supplemented in leisurely ruminating hours ; to fill 
up the pauses in the interminable ceremony by picking 

E 



So 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the teeth and the dingy dessert with alternate impar- 
tiality — is a picture so true as to be trite, and so un- 
attractive as to be scarcely excusable, except upon 
historic grounds. Eveiyone who has spent only a few 
weeks in Germany must have beheld and suffered 
from such scenes. 

It is not my intention to intrench upon the pre- 
rogatives of the cookery-book, or to give in any detail 
the list of German dishes with which I might easily 
furnish my readers. To speak otherwise than gene- 
rally, in a book intended for general readers, would be 
out of place ; but we may be amused by noting the 
various points of difference and similarity between 
our neighbours' modus vivendi and our own. 

There are three great characteristic divisions of 
German food — the Salt, the Sour, and the Greasy : 
the salt, as exemplified by ham and herrings ; the 
sour, as typified by Kraitt and salads ; the greasy, as 
demonstrated by vegetables stewed in fat, sausages 
swimming in fat, sauces surrounded by fat, soups 
filmy with fat. If we were to go into the philosophy 
of food, we should probably find that the salt gives 
the appetite for the grease ; that the grease is necessary 
for warmth-giving purposes, as well as to supplement 
the absence of nutritive quality in what may be 
roundly spoken of as a potato diet ; and that the sour 
acts as a digestive agent on the grease. The food of 
the lower orders in Germany is poor and coarse in the 
extreme : — thin coffee without milk or sugar (sugar is 
an expensive item, and is looked upon as a luxury ; 
except in seabord towns, white colonial sugar is un- 
known, the brown sugar rarely used and little thought 



FOOD. 



5i 



of) ; black rye-bread, which is always more or less 
sour (being made without yeast) ; potatoes stewed in 
fat, with a mixture of onions, apples, carrots, plums, 
or pears ; now and then a bit of fat pork with treacle ; 
a mess of Sauerkraut \ lentils, beans, and a piece of 
Blutwiirst — mysterious entrails of birds, and beasts, 
and fishes that might have puzzled the Augurs of 
old ; Mehlsuppe, Biersuppe\ cabbage boiled in grease, 
and a slice of raw ham. No beer for the women ; no 
white bread. Schnapps for the men, distilled from 
corn or potatoes — a fiery, coarse spirit that would be 
disastrous in its effects but for the mass of food with 
which it is mixed. It has already been seen how 
domestic servants fare, the food in private houses 
being as superior to that found in the peasant's hut, 
as the table in an English middle-class kitchen is 
superior to the scanty meal of the underpaid agricul- 
tural labourer. In mountainous districts the people 
live almost entirely on milk, flour, eggs, butter, cheese, 
and cream. To taste meat is an event in their live3 ; 
nor do they feel the deprivation ; for the pure moun- 
tain^air, the fresh out-door life of the Aim, the healthy 
exercise of climbing and descending, of rowing across 
the lakes, and tending the cattle, makes them healthy, 
vigorous, and cheerful after a fashion unknown to, and 
impossible for, the dwellers in towns and cities. In 
proof of this we have not to go to foreign countries 
for convincing examples. We have only to look at 
what things may be done in a kilt, on i whusky and 
parritch,' to be convinced of the important part fresh 
air and abundant exercise play in the matter of mus- 
cular development 



52 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



Let us begin in our survey with the first meal of 
the day, and see of what it consists. 

There is no family breakfast table as with us, 
where sons and daughters gather round the board, 
letters are received and read, newspapers scanned, 
and the great affairs of the world, as made known by 
telegram, imparted and commented upon. We look 
in vain for the damask table-cloth, the steaming urn, 
the symmetrical arrangement of plate and china, that 
welcome us in the middle-class English household. 
No trim girls in bright cotton or well-cut homespun 
gowns; no young men, whose fresh faces tell of tubs 
and Turkish towels, are here to greet us. There may 
be a linen cloth upon the table (though even this 
detail is far from general), and there will be a coffee- 
pot, and a milk-jug, and a sugar-basin, set down any- 
how and anywhere ; a basket, either of wicker or Japan, 
piled up with fresh Semmehz, perhaps a stray plate or 
two ; a disorderly group of cups of different colours 
and designs ; no butter ; no knives and forks ; possibly 
a plate with a few milk-rolls, of somewhat finer flour 
than the ordinary, and the breakfast equipage is com- 
plete. The first comer (if a lady, in dressing-gown 
and cap ; if a man, in Sclrtafrock and Pantoffehi) will 
help her-, or himself, to coffee and rolls, probably 
eating and drinking like peripatetic philosophers, for 
there is no inducement to ' sit down and make yourself 
comfortable.' If it be winter time, the coffee-pot and 
milk-jug will be placed on the stove instead of on the 
table, and the next comer will go through the same 
formula of solitary feeding, departing, as the case may 
be, for the enjoyment of the post-prandial cigar, or to 



FOOD. 



53 



supplement the somewhat scantily represented i mys- 
teries of the toilette/ The last comer will enjoy the 
dregs of the coffee-pot and the drains of the milk-jug 
on an oil-cloth cover, or a crumpled table-cloth, 
slopped with the surplusage of successive coffee-cups 
and besprinkled with the crumbs of consumed rolls. 

The dejeuner a la fourchette, which is an institution 
in France, dwindles, so far at least as the ladies of the 
household are concerned, into a surreptitious shaving 
of sausage, or a sly sardine, partaken of in solitude 
and haste between the conflicting claims of the kitchen 
and the Friseuseinn. The young (old or middle-aged) 
military heroes, who will probably represent the male 
portion of the household, will prudently ' restore * 
themselves on their way home from drill or parade in 
a more substantial manner than that which suffices 
for the weaker vessels ; thus relieving the much be- 
plagued Hausfraic from any more elaborate sacrifices 
on the gastronomic altar. 

But though breakfast, as we have seen, may leave 
much to be desired, it yet contains elements of excel- 
lence not to be overlooked. Imprimis there are no 
cows with iron tails in Germany, and the rich pure 
milk makes the well-flavoured, if somewhat thin, coffee 
taste excellent. The sugar is beet-root sugar, and 
dees not sweeten so w r ell as the colonial article, but is 
white and sparkling. The crescent-shaped milk-rolls 
{Horncheii) are crisply baked, and make it easy to 
dispense with butter ; the Semmel in its fresh state is 
not to be despised, though, as the day advances, it 
becomes leathery and tough, and at nightfall you will 
long for an honest slice from a good wheaten loaf. 



54 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



The sour rye-bread, ranging from black to a light 
brown, is much condemned by some as affording little 
nourishment ; nevertheless one may acquire a taste 
for it, and many persons declare that they prefer it to 
the tasteless insipidity of the white roll. In some 
parts of Germany you may get what is called Englisches 
Brod baked in small cakes; it is made of very fine 
white flour, with a mixture of butter and milk and a 
dash of sugar in it, that quite destroys any resem- 
blance the name might lead you to expect. Bakeries 
are under Government supervision; not only the 
weight of the bread, but the quality of the flour is 
tested ; and as neither the day nor the hour of the 
inspector's coming can be calculated upon, evasion 
is almost impossible, and cases of adulteration and 
light weight so exceptional as not to be worth quoting. 

I shall, perhaps, surprise the prejudiced amongst 
my readers when I say that I found the materiel, as a 
rule, excellent in Germany. Bread, butter, milk, and 
eggs abundant. The market well stocked with fruit 
and vegetables of the commoner kind (several of the 
latter unknown to us might be adopted with advan- 
tage into our bills of fare). Poultry, as a rule, is poor, 
but cheap. Pigeons to be had for a few pence ; game, 
in season, generally plentiful. No one who has ever 
tasted in a private house a German Rehbraten, with 
cream sauce, will dispute its excellence ; the claims of 
roast partridge with Sauerkraut (this latter not the 
greasy mess table d'hote dinners may suggest, but a 
delicately tempered digestive) to recognition have 
been acknowledged by the descendants of Vatel and 
Ude, for it is a dish to be found in every well-compiled 



FOOD. 



55 



French memt of the present day. What housewife 
would not gratefully hail the fact that she might buy 
a saddle of hare just as we buy a saddle of mutton, 
which, well larded and baptised with sour cream, is 
so mellow and melting a morsel that you might un- 
hesitatingly set it solus before a king. The hare is 
never trussed and sent up to table with its long ears, 
lean head, and unpleasantly grinning teeth, as with us ; 
if you buy the whole animal (and unless you want some 
small and appetisant addition to your dinner you will 
probably do so), the head will be taken off, the legs 
broken at the joints, and the interior of the animal 
will be utilised for the servants' dinner, forming a 
dark and ' wicked broth ' called Hasenpfeffer, into the 
mysteries of which occult preparation I never ven- 
tured to pry, though frequently I saw and heard it 
partaken of with sounds of succulent approval in the 
kitchen. Sweetbreads, for which your butcher calmly 
demands ten shillings a pair during the London sea- 
son, are to be procured for such a price as need not 
wound the conscience of the tenderest Hausfrait ; veal 
kidneys (who ever knew how delicious a veal kidney 
could be until he partook of NierenscJmitte?) need not 
exercise your mind on the score of economy, nor need 
you even hesitate much about 'caviare to the general/ 
or pate de foie gras to the particular. Who that ever 
ate gebratene Htihrfl for the first time in the charming 
inn-garden by the Starnberger See is likely to forget 
that epicurean epoch, or to be ungrateful to the gas- 
tronomic gods for the cream and coffee that followed ? 
But I am growing greedy. The tables of the world 
have recognised the merits of Strasburg pies, West- 



55 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



phalia hams, Pomeranian goose-breasts, Brunswick 
sausages, Bavarian beer, Liibeck marchpane, and 
Hamboro' beef; no contemptible list of exportable 
edibles. Of the beef and mutton I cannot speak in 
glowing terms. Nevertheless they are to be had fairly- 
good, and in the days of the small Residenz towns the 
reigning duke or prince would generally have his 
beeves and sheep fattened after approved methods, 
so that with a little interest and civility one could 
usually so far soften the heart of the slaughterer 
(ScJilachter) as to have an English-looking sirloin and 
a mature leg of mutton as often as one wished upon 
one's table. In the same way there would be a 
poultry farm, or Fasauerie, where the doomed birds 
would be shut up in little pens and 'genudelt, a la 
mode de Strasbourg,' for the royal or ducal table, so 
that a plump roast capon or pheasant was quite within 
the region of recurring possible good things. 1 On a 
change tout cela,' however, and doubtless such con- 
cessions are reckoned among the corruptions of the 
past. Veal is better in Germany than with us, and 
though at all times unwholesome and indigestible as 
food, forms a pleasing variety in the list of ordinary 
dishes that appear on the homely board. It is a 
drawback, to use a Hibernicism, that all the roasts 
(like those that did coldly furnish forth the Queen of 
Denmark's marriage tables) are baked. Yet baked 
meat, well basted and not overdone, forms a concen- 
trated kind of food that use makes almost as palat- 
able as the spitted joint, and seems to be making its 
way to popularity here. Pork is not a favourite dish 
on the tables of the rich ; that is, not in its simpler 



FOOD. 



57 



form ; in its more complex preparation pig is a 
popular meat. Schlachtwurst, Mettwurst, Blutwurst> 
Rauchenden, Leberwurst (this latter being pigs' livers, 
prepared like pate de foie gras> delicately spiced and 
truffled), are only a few of the endless popular varie- 
ties of the German sausage. Ham is generally eaten 
raw, well smoked, and if presented at tea or supper, a 
little wooden platter and a sharp knife will be placed 
beside you, in order that you may cut it into small 
pieces such as are used by cooks for larding. Taken 
in this way as a relish, the flavour is appetising, but 
the uncooked state of the meat renders it tough (zdhe)> 
and involves more mastication than is agreeable. 

Some years ago a cry went abroad of whole dis- 
tricts suffering from trychina ; and in some parts of 
the country not only was the mortality alarming, but 
the sufferings of the afflicted so frightful that Govern- 
ment commissions, with properly appointed medical 
officers, were told off to enquire into the subject. The 
result was, that in every town a medical officer was ap- 
pointed to certify the wholesome condition of all the 
pigs slaughtered before the butcher was permitted to 
offer the meat for human food. In this country, where 
pork and ham are not eaten raw, such measures are 
unnecessary. Unpleasant as the idea of such para- 
sites may be, we know that the boiling would destroy 
their dangerous qualities ; but in Germany, where un- 
cooked ham is the rule and not the exception, and 
where the sausages that are eaten cold are invariably 
only smoked, the precaution is emphatically a neces- 
sary one. 

Fish, except in seaport towns (and these are few 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and far between in Germany), is a scarce and doubt- 
ful commodity ; the Elbe and Rhine salmon very in- 
ferior in flavour to our own, and always dear. When 
produced on great occasions, this fish is almost always 
served cold, encased in a sour jelly if whole, or accom- 
panied by varieties of mayonnaise sauces if only por- 
tions of it are presented to the guests. Carp and 
tench, those muddiest of the fresh-water finny tribe, 
are spoken of with bated breath, as of delicacies fit 
for the table of Apicius himself ; but they are gene- 
rally so disguised with vinegar and complicated fla- 
vourings, that the mud may be said to yield to treat- 
ment. Not only are the salt-water fish very inferior 
to our own, but of infinitely less variety. No sloping 
marble slabs, sluiced with fresh water, adorned with 
mountains of ice and forests of fennel ; no piled-up 
lobsters in gorgeous array, splendid salmon, many- 
tinted mackerel, delicate whitings or domestic soles, 
colossal cod, ministerial white bait or silver sprats, will 
tempt at once your eyes and your palate ; you will 
probably have to dive into an obscure shop, whence 
issues anything but invitingly 'a most ancient and 
fish-like smell,' when, in answer to your demands, a 
doubtful-looking marine monster will be pulled out of 
a mysterious tub at the back of the counter, with the 
remark, ' Heut' giebt's nur Schellfisch' ('how unplea- 
santly/ as Thackeray's schoolboy says of the monkeys, 
' they always smelt '), or ' Dorsch/ or 6 Barsch,' as the 
case may be. In the so-called fish-shop there will be 
all kinds of pickled herrings (these form the founda- 
tion of that most popular of German dishes Haring- 
salat), bloaters (Biicklinge), small dried sprats {Kieler 



FOOD. 



59 



Sprotten) ; perhaps even pickled salmon and a pot of 
caviare may tempt you, for the love of Germans for 
every kind of salt and dried fish (perhaps in default of 
fresh) is apparently an appetite that grows by what it 
feeds upon. 

I remember tasting in Mecklenburgh a most dainty 
dish of dabs, or flat fish, smoked in nettle-smoke (this 
gave them a peculiar delicate flavour) and stewed in 
fresh cream ; the accompaniment being a delicious 
kind of black bread, short and rather sweet, liberally 
bespread with freshly churned butter. Very excel- 
lent, too, are pigeons braised and served with milk 
rice ; the rice being so boiled that each grain is dis- 
tinct, and surrounded with the rich milk in which it 
has been cooked, so that it tastes almost like cream. 
This custom of serving rice, Gries, and different sorts 
of farinaceous food, cooked with milk, as we serve 
vegetables, with roast meat, is one that we might well 
imitate ; we have the beginning of it in our bread- 
sauce with birds, but in Germany it is introduced in a 
variety of forms. Rabbits are rejected by the poorest 
as vermin, unfit for human food ; by which means a 
cheap and not unwholesome dish, when partaken of 
occasionally, is lost to the labouring man. 

Potatoes in bucketsful, and prepared in fifty diffe- 
rent fashions, form the staple of the food of the lower 
orders. 

Dinner, which in Germany is often a painfully pro- 
tracted business, lasting on occasions even three or 
four hours, is, in a general way, partaken of between 
the hours of twelve and two, according to the occupa- 
tion of the master and the school hours of the children 



6o 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of the house. It is scarcely served in a more appetis- 
ing manner than the scrambling breakfast. There is 
a want of cleanliness, of order, of propriety — if I may 
say so, a want of dignity — about the table arrange- 
ments that would almost suggest the total absence of 
any sesthetic feeling in those who sit round the ill- 
appointed board. The servants are noisy, the cloth 
is crumpled, the dishes are slammed down upon the 
table, the gravy is tilted over, the glass is miscella- 
neous, the knives and forks are put in a heap, the 
plates are not changed frequently enough. No crisp 
watercress or curly parsley adorns your cold joint, or 
sets off the complexion of your butter ; it is thought 
jio solecism for everyone to plunge his knife into the 
salt-cellar, to pick his teeth at table, to stretch across 
and reach for whatever he wants. Everything seems 
to be done in a hurry, and yet everything is served 
separately, so that there is nothing to distract the 
attention from the matter in hand. There is a sense 
at once of repletion and emptiness in a German dinner. 
Your stomach has been filled, but not fortified. You 
have begun with a soup which, mathematically speak- 
ing, may be said to represent length without breadth ; 
this has been followed by the botrilli, or soup-meat, 
out of which all nourishment has been flayed, accom- 
panied by a sour sauce, of Morscheln (a debased kind 
of mushroom), boiled in butter and vinegar ; you 
will have abundance of vegetables stewed in fat or 
butter ; sausages and lentils ; some little dumplings 
called Klosze, compotes of cranberries and bilberries, 
stewed plums or cherries ; a piece of roast veal, or 
a fowl {for roast read baked), with potato-salad, 



FOOD. 



6x 



cabbage-salad, or Sauerkraut, and a Meldspeise, this 
representing a rather better than average dinner in an 
ordinary German household. 

At four o'clock coffee will be brought in ; after 
which the master of the house will depart for his 
club, and the mistress will pay visits amongst her 
friends, until the time comes for the theatre. The 
family will not reassemble until supper, which will be 
taken between the hours of seven and nine, depend- 
ing on the length of the opera or comedy, the days 
on which the ladies of the house are abonnees, and 
the various other family engagements and exigencies. 
This is a pleasant meal, resembling high tea. In 
many houses tea is served as with us, and though the 
flavour of it is very different from what we are accus- 
tomed to consider good, I confess I always hailed its 
appearance with satisfaction. Bread, butter, cold ham, 
sausage, tongue, hard-boiled eggs, sardines, cheese, 
and cakes, with perhaps a few additions and altera- 
tions if friends share the meal, represent a German 
supper, or Abendessen. Bordeaux, or beer, or the 
wines of the country, are generally taken by the men 
in preference to tea. Cigars follow ; the ladies retire 
into the withdrawing-room, and at ten o'clock every- 
one is in bed. All the housewives, as autumn wanes, 
lay in a goodly store of vegetables to last through the 
winter months, when nothing of the kind is to be 
procured for love or money. Potatoes are banked up 
in the cellars ; cabbages, carrots, turnips, onions, are 
buried in layers of mould, whence your cook will ex- 
tract them, uninjured by damp or frost, for the daily 
meal. Vegetables of the finer sort, such as French 



62 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



beans, peas, &c, are, as they come into season, pre- 
served for winter use in tins, the process observed 
being a very simple one ; the vegetables, with a little 
salt and water, are put into the tins, which are then 
hermetically sealed by a man who comes to solder 
them down ; the tins are placed in another pan with 
boiling water, and if air-bubbles rise to the surface 
when the water boils, you know that there is a flaw 
somewhere in the soldering ; your man takes out the 
offending tin, ascertains where the defect is and re- 
pairs it. 

These tins of preserved vegetables may be bought 
now in nearly every English grocer's shop : but our 
simpler method of preparing their contents has not 
helped them to popularity. In Germany, where the 
flavour is aided by all sorts of spices — cinnamon and 
nutmeg, sugar and butter — their flatness is much dis- 
guised, and they prove a welcome substitute for the 
real thing. Dried apples and pears and plums, which 
all take the place of vegetables, and enter largely into 
the ordinary domestic fare, are also bought wholesale 
for winter storage ; and these with peas, beans, lentils, 
and rice, not to speak of Gries, Gtiitze, buckwheat, 
and other farinaceous sorts unknown here, afford a fair 
scope for variety in the domestic cuisine. 

It will be objected that Germany could never have 
produced such fighting men, such deep-chested, loud- 
voiced, well-belted, straight-limbed, clanking, swagger- 
ing, awe-inspiring warriors as she has lately shown the 
world, on a fare of veal, vinegar, and chickens. Surely, 
these martial heroes, with the front of demigods and 
the endurance of Titans, show a valour, a high courage, 



FOOD. 



63 



and a well-fed confidence, whose muscularity speaks 
volumes in favour of the flesh-pots of the Fatherland. 
1 Wine to make glad the heart of man, and oil to make 
him a cheerful countenance/ sings the warrior-king, 
David, who himself belonged to fighting times and to 
a fighting race, and was able to appreciate the fact that 
an ill-fed body makes a lily-liver and a craven heart. 
We must have the healthy body if we are to have the 
healthy mind ; we cannot expect doughty deeds with- 
out muscular development. 

i Have you,' said a learned Theban once to me, 
' observed (I am speaking as a physiologist) how 
inferior, in our country, is the woman-animal to the 
man-animal ? ' When a great physician, whose name 
is writ on the scroll of twenty learned societies in 
your own country, stoops to ask you such a lead- 
ing question as this, you are bound not to take ex- 
ception at the form in which he frames it, and to give 
him the answer he expects. ' Well/ he went on to 
say, ' the cause and the effect lie very near together. 
Observe, how do we feed our man-child, and how do 
we feed our woman-child ? You will say, pretty much 
alike. They start fair. The peasant mother nourishes 
both. The active life of our women of the lower 
orders circulates the blood, helps them to assimilate 
the vast quantities of food they take, and this, of 
course, is nutritious. The baby cuts its teeth ; it is 
promoted to another form of food, and from this 
moment the paths of the man-child and the woman- 
child are divergent. The boy goes to school, skates, 
turns (many an Englishman might be astonished at 
the feats of young German athletes in their Turn- 



6 4 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



hallen), makes walking-tours in his holidays, drills, 
marches, goes through his spring and autumn ma- 
noeuvres, developes the muscles of a Hercules and 
the appetite of a Briareus. His active, out-door 
life, the oxygen he breathes, the fatigue he under- 
goes, the discipline to which he submits, all contri- 
bute to develope a strong straight body, to enrich 
his blood, and to help him to assimilate his food. 
The brain is nourished, the muscles are nourished, 
the organs become strong and healthy. Look at our 
young officers, and say if their appetites be not 
heroic. Observe that they eat with large, compre- 
hensive hungriness ; they restore themselves as they 
come from parade with a good basin of beef bouillon, 
with a deep draught of Bavarian beer, with an orgie 
of oysters. Don't you remember Heine's " Lieu- 
tenants und Fahndrichs, die sind die klugen Leute," 
who come and lap up the Rhine-wine and the oysters, 
that were rained down in a beneficent hour on the 
Berlin Steinpflaster ? My most gracious, those are the 
typical men, the coming men, the useful men. Their 
great frames and loud voices are the outcome of 
healthily active lives. What has your woman-child 
been doing all this time ? She has been sitting be- 
hind the stove (hinter y m Ofeii), sucking sugar-plums, 
and swallowing sweet hot coffee ; nibbling greasy 
cakes in a stifling, stove-exhausted atmosphere. She 
does not, as do your young English ladies, ride, walk, 
swim, take what you call "the constitutional," garden, 
boat, hay make, croquet, enjoy all those diversions we 
read of in your English books, The grease that 
nourishes her brother disagrees with her ; she has no 



FOOD, 



65 



digestion : her teeth decay ; she spoils their enamel 
with vinegar and lemonade ; she pecks at an ounce of 
exhausted soup-meat ; she takes here a snick and 
there a snack ; she becomes bleichsiichtig, she is 
ordered to take the air ; she totters out on high-heeled 
shoes to her coffee Kranzcheii ; she sits in a summer- 
house and tortures cotton round a hook ; she goes to 
the theatre ; she passes from one heated, exhausted 
atmosphere to another gas-and-oil-heated one. How 
can she be hungry ? How can her food nourish her ? 
Is it a wonder that she has no chest, no muscle, no 
race, no type, no physique ? ' cried my excited friend. 
' Would the young man have been any better with 
such a life ? And this is only the beginning of the 
story ; between the alpha of food and the omega of 
planting new generations in the world there is a series 
of disastrous mistakes,' said Dr. Zukiinftig, presenting 
me with a pamphlet * On the Comparative Assimila- 
tive Powers of the Races of Modern Europe.' I leave 
him in his professional enthusiasm, which led him into 
an eloquent and exhaustive verbal treatise on the 
complex causes of physical female degeneracy, together 
with a fine comprehensive scheme for the rehabilitation 
of the human race, by the abolition of gas-light, stove- 
heat, high heels, coffee, corsets, scandal, and chignons, 
since in this paper food alone may reasonably engage 
our attention. 

Of the drinks of Germany not much need be said. 
Rhine-wine and Bavarian beer are accepted liquids, 
and need no bush. But whilst upon the subject I 
may mention an institution, well worthy of emulation, 
in the little drinking-booths which, planted at regular 

F 



66 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



intervals along the hot and dusty thoroughfares, offer 
you such welcome refreshment in the shape of spark- 
ling waters, effervescing lemonade, and soda- and 
seltzer-water, for a penny the glass, with any kind of 
fruit syrup you choose added to the reviving and 
sparkling draught. It may be objected that in London 
such obstructive edifices would seriously impede the 
traffic and cause a block upon the pavement, and 
that shop-rent is too dear to admit of mineral water, 
ginger beer, lemonade, and raspberry vinegar being 
sold at a penny a glass. That may be so ; but the 
boon of these little temples of refreshment, where the 
weary wayfarer deposits his modest coin and receives 
a long cool draught in return, that sends him on his 
way rejoicing, is not to be overlooked or denied. 
Very excellent, and quite worthy its poetic name, is 
the fragrant Maitrank that one gets in the ' merry 
month,' with its aromatic bouquet of Waldmeister 
(Asperula odorata, sweet-scented woodruff) and fairy 
flowers floating on the golden liquid ; and not to be 
forgotten in the enumeration of dainty drinks is the 
Imposing Bowie, for which nectar a vessel has been 
specially created and consecrated, and without which 
no convivial meeting or dancing party would be held 
complete. 

In many parts of Germany tea is looked upon as 
medicine. ' Is, then, the gracious lady ill ? ' is no un- 
common question, if by chance an irresistible longing 
should overtake you for the ' cheering cup/ It is only 
to be had good in Russian houses ; but even here not 
always quite according to English taste. Some take 
lemon instead of milk with it ; others substitute red 



FOOD. 



67 



wine ; the tea is often scented ; and I remember once 
having a pound of tea sent me which I was told cost 
three pounds sterling, having come overland, and 
been bought by the kind donor at the fair at Nishni- 
Novgorod, of which I will only say that a little 
vanilla boiled in hay would have pleased me quite as 
well. 

Fruit, as we see it in Covent Garden, or in the 
shop windows of Paris, is unknown in Germany. 
Perhaps the nearest approach to the super-excellence 
of which I speak may be found in the Hamburg 
market, but then the fruit is imported. Oranges, in 
the interior, cost twopence and threepence each, and 
even then are small and of a very inferior quality. 
Gardening is a science very little understood ; the 
outlay of manure, labour, time, and so on, which is 
necessary to produce anything like perfection in trees, 
plants, or vegetables, would be looked upon as thrift- 
less waste. The pears, apples, plums, and cherries 
grow almost wild. To dig about them and rake them, 
to produce varieties, and to improve by selection of 
earths and manures the standard stocks, seems an 
almost unnecessary trouble, since you can pull up the 
old tree when it is exhausted, and plant another in a 
different spot. Quantity, not quality, is what you 
want ; and certainly if quality were presented to you 
at the fraction of a farthing more than its rival quantity, 
you would, on merely conscientious grounds alone, 
reject the former for the latter. 

We must not, however, be supposed to overlook 
the admirable Government Baumschulen of Germany, 
nor to ignore the debt many of our young Indian 



68 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



' Wood ' officials owe to a judicious course of German 
' Forestry.' 

If ever the happy time should come (and I doubt 
it, short of the Millennium) when our cooks will per- 
mit the young ladies of the household to learn how 
to prepare the food that they seem paid to spoil, I hope 
a Median and Persian law may be passed at the same 
time to prevent these fair creatures from carrying the 
history of their culinary prowess and exploits beyond 
the dinner table. Let a stand be made against the 
persistent talk of food that poisons any attempt at 
conversation where two or three German housewives 
are gathered together. The unction with which 
greasy details are discussed ; the comparisons (spe- 
cially odious, it seems to me, in post-prandial hours of 
repletion) of goose-grease dripping with bacon fat ; 
the wearisome enumeration of mysteries connected 
with this dumpling, that sauce, or the other pickle, are 
a burden to the flesh and a weariness to the spirit of 
any mere outsider grievous to be borne. Some of 
my best German friends were angry with me because 
I did not want to eat my cake and have it too. ' We 
are riot ruminating animals/ I said, trying to make 
my feeble stand against this eternal talk of food ; 
' and I don't care to chew the cud of culinary me- 
mories.' But such an ineffectual protest went down 
before the serried ranks of my opponents. Like the 
'Civis Romanus sum' of the old Romans, 'I am a 
German Hattsfrau' is the last paean of pride which 
these patient spouses know ; and what wonder if they 
resent your unwilling homage, and think scorn of a 
temper that is contented to leave the discussion of 
dinner to the table or the kitchen ? 



FOOD. 



69 



' Sir,' said old Samuel Johnson, 'give me the man 
that thinks of his dinner ; if he cannot get that well 
dressed, he may be suspected of inaccuracy in other 
things.' So he may. You don't think better of that 
man who boasts that, to him, the salmon is as the 
sole, the turnip as the truffle. On the contrary, you 
pity or despise his want of culture. You may put up 
Avith Lucullus and his lampreys, or Epicurus and his 
supreme de volaille\ you will, perhaps, even smile 
indulgently on M. Gourmet's gastronomic reminis- 
cences ; but this is the poetry of food. You will, on 
the other hand, bitterly resent the prose of it being 
forced upon you at all times and seasons. We may be 
sure that the honest, arrogant, tea-drinking, old Doctor 
would have been the first to put his conversational 
extinguisher on that man who should dare to dilate 
gluttonously on the food he loved. 

Laughable, and yet characteristic, is the fact that, 
on returning from a dinner, ball, tea, supper, or Kaffee- 
Gesellschaft in Germany, the first question formulated 
by the non-revellers awaiting you at home will always 
have reference to the food. Former experiences in 
other climes will have prepared you for such frivolous 
queries as — 'Well, were the A.'s overdressed, as 
usual ? How did Mrs. B. look ? Did the C. girls 
dance a great deal ? ' and so on. But strangely on 
your unaccustomed ear strikes the solemn question, 
unerring, ponderous, and punctual as a clerk's amen, 
* Na ! was hat's gegeben ? ' (' What did you get ? ') 



jo 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 

£ For manners are not idle, 
But the proof of loyal nature and of noble mind. ' — Tennyson. 

THERE is no subject so difficult to treat fairly as the 
manners of our neighbours. The salient character- 
istics of nations and individuals are seldom their most 
pleasing ones, and it is too much the tendency of 
criticism to wear the garb of blame. Many of us 
unconsciously share the prejudices of that enlightened 
traveller who declared in disgust that, could he have 
conceived it possible that the Continent would be so 
unlike England, he would never have gone abroad. 
Of course ' unconsciously for this is pre-eminently 
the age of internationalities and enlightenment, and 
we are all eager to compare, to learn, to select, and to 
survive as specimens of the fittest. Still we do slip 
that narrow gauge, called prejudice, like a little travel- 
ling thermometer into our coat pockets, and pull it 
out only too readily upon the smallest possible provo- 
cation, with a nod of triumph or a chuckle of silent 
satisfaction at the superior state of our own social 
atmosphere. 

We have in a former chapter adverted to the want 
of manner that jars upon us in ordinary German life. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



7i 



On the other hand, our scrupulousness as to form, our 
dismay at the want of refinement that is only too 
common a table trait among our Teutonic friends, 
is looked upon by some amongst them with contempt ; 
they regard it as a finikin fastidiousness that betokens 
alike affectation and effeminacy, and betrays a small- 
ness of mind that practically precludes the possibility 
of a just judgment. They tell us that we lay too much 
stress on the unimportant details of manner, and that 
we should judge a man by his merits, and not by his 
' nice conduct of a clouded cane,' or the way in which 
he cuts up his food and conveys it to his mouth. 

Such persons adopt an aggressive coarseness of 
behaviour, supposing it to denote a fine independence 
of the shams and conventionalities of life, and it is in 
vain you would try to persuade them that a man may 
combine eminent talents, incorruptible integrity, and 
the purest republican principles with some regard for 
the amenities of civilised life and the feelings of his 
neighbours. We all remember Thackeray's story of 
the man who rescued him from brigands, and lent him 
1,700/., but w T hom he felt himself obliged to cut, 
having met him later at a table d'hote w 7 here he was 
seen to convey peas to his mouth with the assistance 
of his knife ; and how he goes on to relate that he saw 
the charming Princess of Potztausend-Donnerwetter 
performing hideous feats of knife-jugglery at the royal, 
table of her illustrious relatives without blushing, but 
how and why, in her case, he condoned the otherwise 
unpardonable offence. It has happened to the writer 
of these pages to sup, more than once, at royal, serene, 
transparent, and impalpable tables, where the service 



72 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



has been of fine gold, and the air literally charged 
with diamonds and decorations, and yet to tremble at 
the dangerous dexterity of her neighbours as, ignoring 
the humble merits of the fork and spoon, they per- 
formed surprising and audacious tricks with knives of 
Damascene sharpness. It is only fair to add, how- 
ever, that for the most part these distinguished per- 
sonages belonged to a past generation, and that a 
marked improvement may be observed in the manners 
of young Germany in this respect. In the houses of 
the rich, English tutors, governesses, and bonnes are 
popular institutions, and persons of good breeding 
are quite willing to believe that moral integrity and 
even intellectual eminence may be combined with 
seemliness of conduct at table. i My dear,' said a 
German friend to me one day, at whose house I had 
been dining, f you will forgive me, I know, if I say 
that my husband dislikes the English ; not as indi- 
viduals/ she continued, laying a caressing hand on 
mine, ' but as a nation. Still, you see, I have overcome 
his prejudices, and my children have an English 
governess. She teaches them how to eat. You English 
are the only people who understand education in its 
practical aspects. We have the grandest theories 
in the world and behave like boors. Would your 
maid condescend to eat as my aunt ate to-day ? 
Would an English servant hack up his food as that 
handsome hussar did ? My dear, the days are coming, 
even in Germany, when the people who do these 
things will be stoned. At least I shall then have 
saved my offspring from dilapidation if I don't escape 
myself.' 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



73 



I remember once overhearing a charming German 
lady say to a countrywoman of my own, whose ac- 
quaintance she had evidently only casually made at 
the table d'hote dinner from which we had just risen, 
* I knew directly you were English ; you ate so pretty 9 
— a rather unusual style of compliment, but very cha- 
racteristic, and none the less sincere for the uncon- 
scious epigram that lay hid beneath its artlessness. 
Very present also to my mind is a droll dinner scene 
that threatened at one moment to end somewhat 
tragi-comically ; and, as a little illustration is allowed 
to be better than a good deal of argument, I will 
venture, whilst on the subject of table traits, to record 
it here. 

Scene, the Vier Jahreszeiten at Wiesbaden ; time, 
the midday table d'hote. The table was crowded, and 
opposite to our party sat a stern middle-aged Briton, 
of the iron-grey, wiry-whiskered type ; strong as to 
boots, rough as to travelling suit, uncompromising as 
to cleanliness. The whole man cried loudly of brushes, 
soap, water, baths, and bristles. To him enters pre- 
sently, with much bustle and scraping of chairlegs, a 
fat, respectable, and (apparently) good-tempered 
German. He mops his face with a violent-coloured 
handkerchief, makes various inarticulate noises not 
usual in polite society, intermixed with such adjura- 
tions to things in general as * Du lieber Himmel ! 
Herr je ! Was fur eine Hitze ! ' and so on. He of 
the tweed suit and bristling whiskers glances momen- 
tarily askance at his neighbour, as who should say, 
' What specimen of humanity is this ? ' Then slightly 
drawing his chair aside, and modifying the expression 



74 GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of disgust and surprise that has momentarily illu- 
mined his impassive countenance, calmly continues 
his decorous meal. His neighbour, however, dis- 
gusted perhaps in his turn by his exclamations meet- 
ing with no response, annoyed, perhaps, by the 
* stony British stare ' of the iron-grey man, overcome 
by that sense of tcedium vitce which a pause in the 
service is apt to superinduce in even better regulated 
dispositions, runs his hands through his hair, rubs his 
head on each side, and plunges his not over-clean 
digits into the dessert dish nearest to him. He has 
already cracked and eaten an almond, and is returning 
for a chocolate cake, w T hen his hand is suddenly ar- 
rested in mid-air. 

' Mossir ! ' cries the indignant Briton, grasping his 
arm as in a vice, and in default of German (it wasn't 
expected in the army examinations of the period) 
speaking such French as indignation gave him in that 
hour, ' Mossir! ne pouvez pas ! me faisons mal, mossir, 
me faisons mal, ICI !' and the honest gentleman laid 
an expressive hand on the anti-climax of his waist- 
coat. 

' Shir ! mishter !' cries the outraged Teuton (observe, 
in perfectly understandable, if somewhat eccentric, 
English), ' shir, you are not von chentlemansh ; you 
know not was ish de pehaviour ; you dreat me like 
von bigsh.' 

' Pigs ? ' shouted Colonel O'Reilly, his yellow In- 
dian face all aflame with hot Celtic blood. ' By dash, 
sir, it's you that have said it ; and, by' blank, sir, I'm 
not the man to conthradict ye ! ' General uproar, 
scuffle, and confusion. Mine host appears upon the 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



75 



scene and endeavours to pour oil upon the troubled 
repast. Notes of exclamation, indignation, admira- 
tion, and adjuration fly about like hailstones, till at 
length the more practical of the party remembering 
that the dinner calls for immediate discussion, whereas 
the episode may be relegated for post-prandial consi- 
deration, the hubbub ceases, and order reigns once 
more at Warsaw. Colonel O'Reilly, naturally su- 
premely indifferent to being told that he is not a 
gentleman by an excited German bagman, stalks 
calmly out of the room, and we have the pleasure of 
seeing him a few hours later dining leisurely and with 
dignity, in spotless solitude, at a little round table, 
with mine host in abject attendance. He was evi- 
dently of Mr. Emerson's opinion, and ' could better 
eat with one that did not respect the truth or the laws 
than with a sloven or unpresentable person.' 

Speaking roundly, one would say that the German 
manner is rough. It would almost seem as though 
there were pride in the unpliability that shocks us. 
We are, ourselves, not a demonstrative people ; we 
have never been accused of easy manners ; but we sin 
rather by omission than by commission. We are 
silent, sometimes from shyness, sometimes, it may be, 
from pride ; but as a rule we go quietly through life, 
and do not pique ourselves on want of politeness or 
glory in giving an uncouth answer when a civil one 
would do equally well. Englishmen cannot now 
swagger over the Continent as they did in the post- 
Waterloo days, and during the halcyon period of the 
Palmerston premiership. We have been told, more 
than once lately, that we are politically ' nowhere,' 



76 



GERMAN HOME LIEE. 



and that socially Russian princes and American 
cousins have altogether extinguished us. There has 
been an ill-concealed contempt of our insularity, an 
impatient pity of our contractedness, a disgust at our 
want of martial ardour, a reprehension of our tame 
turning of the cheek, already smitten, to the smiter, a 
general reprobation of our feebleness and degeneracy 
somewhat galling to the spirit of Englishmen. Bluster 
has hitherto not been greatly esteemed amongst us, 
yet when we have had things to do we have not 
shrunk from the doing ; whatever our policy may be, 
and whatever our faults as a nation, as individuals we 
are not cowards. The British traveller is apt to be 
considerably exercised in spirit nowadays by the repel- 
lent roughness, the sort of aggressive ' Jack in office 1 
manner, that petty Prussian officials, in all the inflated 
self-importance of triumphant red-tapeism and success- 
ful bureaucracy, are apt to adopt on (or without) the 
slightest provocation. It is a little hard for a being 
whose immemorial boast, man and boy, it has been 
(as it was that of his father before him) that he could 
' lick ' any three given i foreigners,' singlehanded, to 
find himself tied to an official string, dragged from 
pillar to post, and from post back again to pillar, put 
in the wrong about nothing, not allowed to put himself 
in the right and slip the ignominious collar. 

On the other hand, we ought to be patient ; we 
ought to recognise in our cousins-german our natural 
allies, by blood, by religion, by that very earnestness 
and devotion and thoroughness which have brought 
about such magnificent results in so incredibly short 
a space of time. The determination, the silent endu- 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



77 



ranee, the wholesale sacrifice, the unmurmuring devo- 
tion to duty, the total absence of anything like brag 
or boast both before, during, and even after the late 
Franco-Prussian war, are all qualities so dear to our 
own hearts, so calculated to win respect and admira- 
tion from us, that surely we need not be supersensi- 
tive as to the snubs we get now and then from our 
successful relatives. Because our laurels are some- 
what sere and yellow, we should not forget how we 
felt when the intoxication of victory was ours ; and if 
the Prussian eye has a suspicious glance in it, ready 
to see affront in the quiver of an eyelash or the tension 
of a muscle, we should return the questioning gaze 
frankly and fearlessly, and show no anger in reply. 
It is natural that the talk of these modern Titans 
should be somewhat tall, and their demands on our 
admiration somewhat excessive ; we, on our part, 
should bear in mind that there is trial as well as 
triumph in the position of the nouveau ricke, who 
wakes up suddenly to find himself a millionaire, and 
is (somewhat unreasonably) expected by society to 
comport himself as modestly as though Fortune had 
not turned her wheel, and he were still sweeping out 
the shop. 

Manner, in Germany, varies according to grades 
and classes after a fashion quite impossible in Eng- 
land, where there is such a fusion of society that it 
would be difficult to define with any precision where 
one class leaves off and the other begins. 

You have, for instance, the military manner, which 
consists in well-squared shoulders, a well-belted waist, 
a regulation spine, an angular elbow, a click of the 



78 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



heels, a salute that is meant to be at once fascinating 
and haughty, and a pronounced contempt for every- 
thing civilian beneath the grade of a privy councillor 
or a first secretary. And you have the diplomatic 
manner, which is refined, lofty, guarded, perhaps 
slightly mysterious, but at the same time gently un- 
bending, always gallant, often epigrammatic, and 
generally altogether amiable, easy, and charming. It 
may be a feminine prejudice, but great statesmen 
seem to understand better how to treat women than 
do great warriors. They have not the hand for ever 
on the sword-hilt, there is less command in their eye 
and more amenity in their glance ; the sense of steel 
and the smell of powder, the ghastly traditions of 
blood and iron, do not oppress you, as in the presence 
of these grisly heroes : it is, in fact, easier to bandy 
words with the greatest of modern statesmen than to 
attempt the mildest joke, that might be construed 
into a slight of his regiment or a slur on his Father- 
land, with the feeblest little fledgling of a FaJindrich. 
A diplomatist is seldom above being charmed by a 
pretty face, a lively manner, or a tasteful toilet ; and 
he pays his compliments so dexterously, and shows 
his appreciation with such fine tact, that he puts the 
shyest debutante at her ease, and confirms her success 
before a quarter of an hour has elapsed. But your 
eagle-crested warrior, to show his stoical disregard of 
the Capuan luxuries surrounding him, will drag his 
sword after him, stalk calmly through your train, and 
when asked to take his spurs out of your furbelows, 
does it with no more animated expression of regrec 
for the devastation he has caused than might be ex- 
pected of an automaton. 



MANA T ERS AND CUSTOMS. 



79 



No doubt the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number is a sound politico-economical principle ; but 
— away from Berlin — you will hear many a sigh over 
the snug obscurity of former days, when each little 
State enjoyed its own social pleasures, and talked of 
a united Fatherland much as the Mahommedan talks 
of Paradise, not quite realising how soon and how far 
the tips of the Prussian eagle's wings were to extend 
beyond their own borders, and safe in sentimental 
patriotic generalities, of which beer was often the 
foundation and bathos the outcome. 

Nowadays, when Hanover, for instance, is gar- 
risoned by Prussian regiments, when such as have not 
disappeared into space of the indigenous troops of 
smaller States are sent far afield to distant frontier 
towns, the inhabitants seem much like school-children, 
bound, under the stern eye of their master, to be on 
their best behaviour ; there is a sense of restraint, a 
division of opinion, a chafing under ' the wounding 
cords that bind and strain/ which looks treasonably 
like regret for the day of small things. The change 
has not improved the tone of social life ; there is an 
uncertainty, a suspicion, a wavering towards the new, 
a clinging to the old, that has disturbed the former 
free, unrestrained kindliness of intercourse. The 
suaviter in mo do has suffered on either side. Whilst 
the weak clamour against the for titer in re, the might 
which these not too merciful giants declare is their 
right, they, on their part, gaze on the futile resistance 
of the protected and governed with a glance not 
exactly calculated to inspire love in recalcitrant 
bosoms. 



8o 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



But to return to our theme. We have the legal 
manner. Not perhaps what, at a first glance, we 
might expect it to be. There is nothing of the Bacon 
philosophy or the Burleigh nod about it ; judicial 
calm and magisterial dignity are not its characteris- 
tics ; on the contrary, it is, taken in the aggregate, 
brisk, clamorous, pert, and persistent ; it tells of the 
would-be orator, member of Parliament, minister, 
statesman, regenerator of his country. Some years 
ago, when every little local advocate had something to 
say as to the grievances of Reuss and Greiz, when the 
Bergs and the Bachs had their boundaries, and the 
Krahwinkel cock crowed the loudest of all, there arose 
upon the political horizon of Germany a figure, heroic 
in its massive muscularity of outline, and wielding the 
battle-axe of despotic authority with almost Berserker 
wrath. Prince Bismarck, then simply Herr von 
Bismarck, the hated and despised of the popular 
party, was already famous for his grim and terse com- 
prehensiveness of expression. He had just done a 
magnificent silent stroke of business with the prime 
minister of another country, and as he bade him fare- 
well remarked, in his own quiet way, ' And now I am 
going home to sit upon the lawyers ! 1 Nothing could 
be more trenchant ; but one must, perhaps, have 
lived in Germany 6 pour bien gouter la plaisanterie/ 

Again, we have the professorial manner, of which 
the exponent parts are popularly supposed to be spec- 
tacles, indifference to the ordinary sublunary affairs of 
life, and an unlimited faculty for evolving camels (or 
anything else) out of that inner consciousness which fur- 
nishes the owner with a never-failing supply of happy 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



Sr 



abstractions. Yet who that has lived in Germany will 
hesitate to take off his hat, and stand bareheaded in 
respectful admiration of that modesty of manner, that 
singleness of purpose, that simplicity of mind, which 
distinguish her great men ? Whether artists, philo- 
sophers, poets, or physicians ; whether Nature claims 
them as her own, or art or science say, ' These are 
mine,' they go their silent way, looking neither to the 
right hand nor to the left, not expecting admiration, 
not claiming recognition, scarcely desiring reward ; 
certain only of one thing, and happy in the certainty 
that if they labour with love, if they do good work 
for the work's sake, they will not have lived in vain. 
We may laugh at their helplessness, their absence of 
mind, their careless costume, their want of savoir vivrc, 
but it is with a tender laughter that savours more of 
love than ridicule ; that is aware of its own folly, and 
is mentally conscious that it only ripples round the 
feet of these great ones, whose heads have already 
struck the stars. There is an utter absence of all self- 
consciousness or grimace about them ; and if we criti- 
cise their outer men it is with the banter of affection, 
just as w T e keep our little playful familiarities for 
those we love best at home, and cut our feeble jokes 
upon the peculiarities and characteristics of our 
favourites. 

Again, there is the student-manner, in contem- 
plating the antics of which we seem to be conning a 
page out of some chronicle of the Middle Ages. Its 
jack-boots and rapiers, its long hair and embroidered 
breeches, its pipes and beeriness, its sliced ears and 
slit noses, its smoking bouts and drinking orgies, its 

G 



32 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



unions and guilds and wild minstrelsy, are so many- 
anachronisms. These noisy swashbucklers, whose 
hands are for ever on their rapiers, whose creed is a 
word and a blow, whose favourite butt is the decorous 
citizen, who jeer at the Philistine virtues, and use the 
world as abusing it, are a rather terrible class. They 
pride themselves on this super-exuberance of youth, 
and do not hesitate to play any pranks that suggest 
themselves should genial inspiration move them to 
midnight wassail, but, fortunately for the non-student 
world, time puts a merciful period to these follies, 
and even the wildest Bursch cannot carry his peculiar 
traditions into social life with him. 

In a country where coronets and quarterings are 
counted up as cardinal virtues, where the pretensions 
of the canaille are cavilled at, the bourgeoisie snubbed, 
the noble divided from the ' ignoble ' even in the ranks 
of the theatres, and where, without a title, you cannot 
go to Court, we are sure to find a vast amount of 
etiquette ; but (my German friends will be angry with 
me, I know) Ave must not expect too much politeness. 
When we come to speak of language we shall see that 
the cumbrous phraseology of etiquette counts for 
more than that simple politeness of the heart, which 
is but the sublimated abnegation of self, that marks 
the manner of the true gentleman. Again, when we 
come to speak of woman, her position and her work, 
we shall see how much more fortunate are we than 
our German sisters in these, particulars ; how much 
more tenderly we are treated ; how far greater a 
liberty of action is allowed us, and how fair and free 
are our lives when compared with theirs. 



MANA T ERS AND CUSTOMS. 



S3 



It is true that a larger social horizon is opening 
for Germany ; the partition of class prejudice must 
fall as the sphere of action is widened, as men learn 
to see that all work is honourable if undertaken in an 
honourable spirit, when bankers and merchants will 
cease to be, as is now the case, almost exclusively 
Israelites ; when younger sons will don the robe and 
assume the cassock, and cure the sick, and acknow- 
ledge that the office dignifies the man at least as 
much as the man dignifies the office. Until then, per- 
haps, the roughness of manner, the zvant of manner,, 
that shocks us in the mass of the German middle- 
class, will keep noble and simple apart. It can 
scarcely be otherwise ; yet all who love Germany must 
long for the day when a wider and more liberal view 
in these matters shall be hers, and when progress and. 
development shall have cast for ever into the back- 
ground that petty personal view of things which for 
long years kept her small despite her innate elements 
of greatness. 

But, before I pass away from the subject, let me. 
say a word of that true-hearted, simple, childlike 
manner that belongs to no class, that is independent 
of rank or profession, that wins your confidence, that 
makes your heart warm within you, that shines like 
truth itself out of the honest eyes that are looking: 
into yours, and clasps your hand in blameless brother- 
hood. Even as I write these words a scene rises 
before my eyes of a long garden-parlour, with win- 
dows that look on the one side into the dusty poplar- 
bordered road, and on the other across a rough grass- 
plat, where the great walnut-tree makes a chequered 



84 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



shade, and the old sundial is marking the silent hours. 
Two children, a boy and a girl, are sprawling on the 
bare floor ; the afternoon is hot, and they are tired of 
play out of doors. Somewhat fretful, as is the manner 
of their kind under such circumstances, they fling their 
arms and legs to and fro, and stare at the window. 
Suddenly the Herr Professor passes along at a swing- 
ing trot : he is going to his Kegelclub beyond the 
town gates ; but he catches a glimpse of the two little 
red, discontented faces, and turning in, takes a book 
from the table, and without further greeting or pre- 
amble begins to read. With chin in hand, and eyes 
big with wonder and expectation, the children gaze 
up at the Herr Professor (his name is known over all 
the civilised globe) as he tells them the immortal 
Marchen of Aschenbrddel. When he comes to — 

' Ruck i di guck 
Blut ist im Schuck,' 

the eyes grow rounder and the gaze more intent The 
humorous manner, the dear kindly voice, hold others 
enthralled besides the little unconscious sensationalists. 
Ah me ! it is all over now. I went there the other 
day, and they had put a smart new storey on the top 
of the summer parlour : a Tivoli had been instituted 
opposite, and the tum-ti-tum of the drum and the 
tootle-tooing of the cornet made night hideous. Where 
the walnut tree stood, a cockney summ er-house flaunted 
in gimcrack splendour, and the dear old sundial had 
disappeared altogether from the face of the earth, out 
of love with the changes that told the ' times were out 
of joint.' The story was told : Cinderella had driven 
off* with her prince in the pumpkin chariot ; the wise 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



8y 



kind eyes were closed ; the voice we had loved was 
silent ; and out in the churchyard, extra micros, the 
busy brain was resting from its labours, and a hicjacct 
told us all that remained to tell of the story. 

Of that reticence of manner which we are apt to 
consider as one of the essentials of good breeding our 
cousins-german know nothing. As a rule all classes 
talk at the top of their very powerful voices. No man 
waits for his neighbour to finish the observations he 
has begun ; he shouts in reply as though the main 
object were to be heard at any cost. Take a cafe, 
a steamer, a railway carriage, any place of public re- 
sort where two or three Teutons are gathered together, 
and the result will be vociferous. That finer instinct 
which teaches the talker to lower his voice in a picture 
gallery or a public garden, and produces a pleasant 
hush in clubs, reading-rooms, and theatres, is entirely 
wanting here. There is nothing to be ashamed of in 
what they are saying ; anyone may hear it ; what 
need to make a mystery about why you are parting 
with your nursemaid, or what you are going to have 
for dinner ? It has often puzzled me to account for 
this entire absence of sensitiveness to discordant 
sounds in a people who claim to be (and perhaps are) 
the most musical on the face of the earth. One would 
fancy the ear delicately attuned to harmony would 
be acutely alive to the grating harshness of crying 
discords. 

Nor, as a rule, will the publicity of Rhine steamers, 
railway carriages, Danube boats, or post waggons hi 
any way moderate the demonstrations of affection 
with which many of your fellow-travellers will beguile 



86 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the way. It is quite customary for betrothed couples 
to exchange the most intimate endearments, sitting 
enlaced in each other's arms, beneath the very noses 
of their respective Fran Mamas and Herr Papas, 
who, in stout complacency, are probably also sitting 
hand-in-hand, and beaming on things in general in 
a state of mild beatitude that nothing short of an 
earthquake or an explosion could disturb. There is 
nothing surreptitious about the matter ; no ' fearful 
joy,' snatched in a moment of ardour or agony ; no 
blushing or bashfulness, no coyness or tremor, neither 
haste nor hesitation. No, there they sit ; square and 
broad, solidly satisfied, and partaking of the kisses 
and the Butterbrddter with calm impartiality. If 
the journey be long, you may not improbably be 
tempted to wish the boat would blow up or the 
mountains fall down, so wearisome and distasteful 
to you will become the enforced proximity of their 
prosaic familiarities. It will be objected that these are 
not the manners of good society ; nevertheless, they 
are the manners that will meet you in every public 
conveyance throughout the length and breadth of 
the Fatherland ; manners authorised by custom and 
sanctioned by precedent. They have even created a 
walk of art that must be familiar to you in the cheap 
coloured prints adorning inn-parlours and humble 
domestic dwellings, beneath which is written for the 
edification of the unlettered, in three languages, 
* Familiengluck,' ' Les Joies de Famille,' ( Domestick 
Bliss.' One is apt at times, when one's pilgrimage is 
long, to wish it were a little more ' domestic,' and 
reserved exclusively for the parlours which would 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



37 



seem to be the fitting shrines for such demonstra- 
tions. 

Of customs we can only speak very generally as 
regards a country where every province has its own 
peculiar traditions, and where a conservative affection 
has preserved these with an almost religious exac- 
titude. 

Very unpleasant, according to our ideas, is the 
rule that strangers must make the first advance. Thus 
w T hen you arrive in a town where you propose to 
remain for any length of time, you will provide your- 
self with an introduction or two, you will procure a 
list of the Honoratioren, or honourabilities, of the 
place, and you will drive from door to door, leaving 
cards. These cards will presently be returned, and 
shortly afterwards a footman or laquais de place will 
call, ask to see the Hcrrschaften, and will then in due 
form deliver his master's message, requesting the 
honour of your company at dinner, on such a day, at 
three, four, or five o'clock, as the case may be. When 
you arrive on the festive scene, it will be your duty to 
request the hostess to introduce you to all the ladies 
present. This she will do, presenting you to the 
excellencies and distinguished personages first, the 
tour being made according to the nicest gradation of 
etiquette, so that beginning with an ambassadress you 
will end with a lieutenant's wife, and then in turn 
have to receive yoitr court — namely, the husbands of 
all those ladies to whom you have been doing reve- 
rence. The curtseyings, the obeisances, the compli- 
ments, at once embarrass, annoy, and tickle you. 
Your stiff British backbone doesn't take kindly to the 



88 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



prostrations ; your knees resent the genuflexions ; 
you scorn to grovel, yet you fear to offend ; you feel 
ridiculous in your unwonted antics, and are afraid of 
falling off ; and yet a sense of humour would make it 
difficult, w T ere you at your ease, to abstain from shouts 
of laughter at the bobbing, sliding, gliding, and gri- 
macing in which you are playing such an unwilling part. 
You feel that these ladies who dip and wriggle as to 
the manner born are criticising your want of grace, 
your rustic air, your wooden-jointed reverences, and 
yet you swear to yourself by all your gods that no 
inch lower than is consistent with your ideas of per- 
sonal dignity will you sink before these your fellow- 
creatures. The blood rushes to your face, partly in 
pride, partly in embarrassment, and you wish yourself 
well out of this galcrc ; yet you are angry with your- 
self with an unreasoning anger for your want of 
philosophy and your unpliable spine. Experience, it 
is true, will make these scenes familiar and indifferent 
to you ; you will gather courage to preserve your 
natural gait, to grant your limbs the freedom to which 
they have been accustomed, to be polite and pleasant, 
and to go your own way without attempting to ape 
manners that went out of fashion in England before 
Queen Charlotte died. It is only the first step that 
costs ; but it costs a great deal ; and it is not easy for 
a very young woman to preserve the juste-milieu be- 
tween a modest desire to conform to the customs of the 
country and a sense of mortification at aping manners ' 
which she does not admire, and cannot cordially desire 
to successfully imitate. The absurdity of a German 
curtsey would be ridiculous if it were not sublime. 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



89 



In all the sociable little Residenz towns, the minis- 
ters being allowed a certain yearly sum fcr Tafelgeld 
(table money), are bound to give a proportionate 
number of balls and dinners ; and to these (if you are 
of the Gesellschaft) you are certain to be bidden. To 
leave you out, because you give neither balls nor 
dinners in return, would be to insult your class ; and 
this liberal view of social obligations produces a most 
pleasant result. 

How 7 many charming young married women there 
are in England who would be glad to amuse them- 
selves, happy to dance in muslin, if mechlin be denied 
them; how many that w r ould adorn society, make draw- 
ing-rooms that are dull with dowagers and diamonds 
gay with bright youth and pleasant laughter ; yet they 
are not asked, because they give no dinners in return ; 
because the alderman's wife, who is blazing with the 
diamonds of Golconda and the gold of Ophir, would 
wonder, and the county member's wife would be dis- 
gusted at the simplicity displayed in the cheap gown 
of the ' young person' opposite, and marvel at the 'queer 
people ' you had got about you. In Germany there 
is no snobbishness of this kind ; there is class-prejudice, 
but let it only be known that you are a lady, your wel- 
come will be just as warm though you come in cloth 
of frieze instead of cloth of gold. You are asked to 
amuse and to be amused; you can enjoy yourself quite, 
as well, though you be only a lieutenant's wife, as 
though you were a countess from before the Deluge ; 
and the consequence of this liberal view of things is, 
that youth and gaiety, and fresh toilets and bright 
faces, are generally to be found at German balls, 



9° 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



though there may not be so much jewellery and pomp 
and circumstance as your prejudiced mind may deem 
desirable on such festive occasions. What you are, 
not what you have, is the only matter to be considered ; 
and if you are what society expects you to be, you 
may anticipate, as our transatlantic friends say, ' a 
good time.' 

There is a custom — namely, that most inconvenient 
one of the younger sons all bearing the family title — 
which, whilst speaking of society, I cannot pass over 
in silence. So long as cadets of noble families re- 
main within their own borders, it is not, perhaps, a 
matter of serious inconvenience. Everybody knows 
everything about everybody else (and a great deal 
besides), and not a shopkeeper but is perfectly aware 
what credit it will be safe to give to the young count, 
between whom and the i county ' there are ten stalwart 
lives, and whose modest appanage barely suffices to 
find him in gloves and cigars. But it becomes rather 
a serious matter for a youngster, should exceptional 
fate send him on his travels, to have nolens volens a 
title tacked on to his name. Every innkeeper makes 
a note of it, and the bill swells into an important 
document. Should he buy anything, the shopkeeper 
scarcely expects he will gather up the dirty coppers 
and debased silver that lie on the greasy counter ; 
should anyone bring him a parcel, a Trinkgeld must 
be forthcoming ; he cannot haggle with droschky- 
drivers or squabble with landlords. Noblesse oblige, 
and who is to guess that the young scion of nobility 
is not the man in possession, not even the rich man's 
heir ? He is, perhaps, a likelier man than either of 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



them, with a greater air of command about him, bear- 
ing a bolder front, going through life gaily, and smiling 
in as debonair a fashion as though the ancestral acres 
were his, and thousands of Thaler made heavy the 
money-bags at home. 

But seeing the insane rage for titles of every de- 
scription that exists in Germany, it is almost futile to 
expect that the owners of such distinction as here- 
ditary rank should consent to lay it down ; and every 
Jew-banker, every successful speculator, every petty 
employe, is ready to clamour, cringe, contrive, fight, 
fawn, or grovel to attain the grand object of this much- 
coveted distinction. The ridiculous official appella- 
tions, the preposterous pretensions, the contemptible 
hankering after merely honorary titles, makes a cer- 
tain section of German society the scene of childish 
rivalries that are a fair -butt for the criticism of out- 
siders. 

The old nobility look upon these neugebackene 
(newly-baked) pretensions with scorn and disgust ; 
the class below such aspirants treat the matter with 
biting satire ; and to outsiders the comble de folic 
appears reached by the wives insisting on sharing the 
titles of their husbands ; so that, if you would avoid 
offence, you must train your mind and torture your 
tongue to acquire the custom of saying, ' Thank you, 
Mrs. Privy-Councilloress ' At your commands, Mrs. 
Overpolice Directoress ; 1 ' After you, Mrs. Riding* 
Foresteress 'No doubt, Mrs. Consulting- Architec- 
tress ; ' * With pleasure, Mrs. Inspectoress of Sewers f 
' As you say, Mrs. Veritable (wirkliche) Privy-Coun- 
cilloress/ or Commercial- Councilloress, or Doctoress, 



92 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



or Assessoress. I think, after such vagaries as these, it 
must be conceded even by democrats that the titles 
of prince, count, or baron bear about them an almost 
antique simplicity. 

That love of nature which seems born with every 
German has brought about a passion for villcggiatura 
for which we have no parallel in England. It is the 
custom of the prosperous citizen of a Sunday after- 
noon to repair, attended by his numerous following, 
to his so-called ' garden.' Here he will smoke the 
calumet of contemplation whilst he gazes enchantedly 
on his patch of potatoes or his prolific pear-trees. If 
he be well to do, he will probably have erected a 
Sommer-wohntmg on his patch of ground ; a shady 
arbour will crown a mount overlooking the roadway, 
and here you will see his spouse, stocking in hand, 
presiding over the coffee-table, whilst his daughters 
air their charms (invariably in low dresses) and criti- 
cise the passers-by with evident pleasure and much 
vivacity of manner. 

From the streets of the shabbiest little towns, 
where the fields beyond are within a stone's throw, 
and where other than the existing urban arrangements 
would seem unnecessary, you will yet find that the 
chief butcher and baker have erected their Tusculums, 
whither they retire, so soon as the warm season arrives, 
to enjoy their leisure with dignity. These ' gardens 9 
are apt to be rather a thorn in the humbler domestic 
flesh. Into the mysteries of accommodation it is as 
well not to pry too curiously ; but as a rule the family 
food has to be cooked in the town, and brought out ill 
baskets lined with baize by the maid of all work, to 
whom the rural delights are a cause of perpetual 



MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 



93 



aggravation. 1 Have you a garden ? ' is no uncommon 
question for a servant to ask when you are engaging 
her, and the meaning of it is that no groaning to and 
fro along dusty highroads is to be included in the 
bargain. 

Very amusing is the custom of imparting all the 
little items of family news, sending sentimental greet- 
ings and fond farewells, through the dirty daily sheet 
that is published under the title of the ' Anzeige.' It 
makes no pretence to politics ; it ignores literature and 
the drama (except in the form of advertisement) ; its 
mission being at once to soothe the feelings and supply 
the stomach. It mingles the material with the im- 
material in a manner that is often intensely comic. 
In not a few houses it is the only literary sustenance 
offered to the household, and many a matron would 
not think the whole duty of woman accomplished 
unless she had read the ' Anzeige ' through, from A to 
Z, before sundown. The communications, taken at 
random, run much as follows : — 

To-day, at 11.35 p - M -> m y dear wife, born Louisa Kramer, was 
safely delivered of a strong and lively boy. 

AdolpJi Ehlers, 

as Husband. 

If the donkey left on the patch of common- outside the Stone-gate 
is not claimed before to-morrow, it will be sold. 

By Order of Police. 

We have the honour to announce to our friends and the public the 
betrothal of our daughter Margarethe with Mr. Auscultator Schmidt. 

August Meyer, 

Emilia Meyer, born Sanger. 

To-morrow I shall receive fat herrings, as also superfine oysters and 
Elbe salmon, from Hamburgh. Pondering persons (darauf reflecti- 
rende), be pleased to make a note of it. 

Wilhelm Braun. 



94 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



To those friends who accompanied us as far as the ' Green Hunts- 
man ' on our departure, we send once again our hearty greetings and 
farewells. 

Karl Schroeder, Max Stumpf, Fritz Koiiig. 

To-morrow and the eight following nights, being moonlit, the gas- 
lanterns will not be illuminated. 

By Order of Police. 

The Grand Duke Henry XXXVIII. of Katzenellenbogen has been 
pleased to confer, on occasion of his late visit to our Serene Court, the 
Grand Order of the Cat Peccant on Colonel and Adjutant the Baron 
von Minkwitz ; and the same Order (II. Class) on the Major and Court 
Chamberlain Herr von Goldschliissel. 

If the fool who was kicked out of the Quinze Club on Friday night 
does not immediately send an apology to the parties insulted, he may 
look to have his nose pulled on the first convenient opportunity. 

Signed, the Clnb Members. 

Prime pork sausages, together with smoked ham and geese-breasts, 
are to be had from to-morrow (inclusive) every Wednesday by 

Widow Boll man. 

Bewitching maiden, may thy thoughts wander beneath moonlit 
skies to him who, forced from thy beloved presence, will never forget 
the charmed hours spent beside thee in the midst of Nature's green 
delights. 

H. X. M. F. 

The cackling of the two geese that has long been a source of sup- 
pressed annoyance to the inhabitants of Duke Street is hereby publicly 
protested against. 

The Inhabitants. 



With which example we may, perhaps, as well con- 
clude. 



LANGUAGE. 



95 



CHAPTER V. 

LANGUAGE. 

' I have been a stranger in a strange land. ' — Exodus. 

In these days, when the study of language, taking its- 
place amongst the acknowledged sciences, sits in its 
own special ' chair ; ' when philologers by their patient 
research have opened up new fields of thought and 
study, and words mean more than they ever meant 
before, it may well savour somewhat of presumption 
in a homely pen to exercise itself on a subject that, 
at a first glance, might appear too high for it. From 
the learned, the scientific point of view, it goes without 
saying that the writer has no pretension to be heard ; 
but when we think of how significant a part the 
language of Home Life plays in all existences, how 
largely it enters into the day of small things, into 
* our-what-we-do-life,' as Mary Lamb calls it — how 
absurdly miserable, or comically contented, or ridicu- 
lously happy, it can make us, she ventures to claim 
patience for a few unlettered words on the subject. 

To learn a new language is to have a new life 
opened up to us ; it is to know new people, to recog- 
nise new modes of thought, new attitudes of mind, 
new phases of character ; it is to see things with 
i larger, other eyes ; ' to look at men and facts from 



9 6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



another standpoint ; to be, as it were, translated into 
another phase of being, and to learn many things 
hitherto undreamt of in our narrower philosophy. 
Upon the principle that ' half a loaf is better than no 
bread,' we may be very grateful for translations ; but 
translations can by no means produce the same effect 
upon the mind as though we read the classics in the 
* original.' Whilst acknowledging the large debt of 
gratitude that we owe to the painstaking labour and 
love of translators, we have only to take some familiar 
passages from one of our own poets, and turn it into 
the very best prose of which we are capable, in order 
to appreciate how easily it is deprived of its charm. 
Robbed of its rhythm, of the turn that surprised and 
enchanted us, of the subtle delicacy of expression that 
lay in the happy arrangement of the words, the spell 
Is broken. It was the form that delighted us ; the 
art, concealing art, that satisfied our minds. In every 
translation there is, if I may use the expression, an 
unwontedness, a discrepancy between the mode of 
thought and the method. We read it with a sense of 
strangeness, and our minds do not jump with the 
matter ; we feel outside of our subject, and know that 
we should understand the man better if we could read 
him in his own tongue, and hear him discourse of 
things in a language that more exactly expresses his 
thoughts than our own can do. The style is then 
proper to the subject. We catch the spirit instead of 
having to content ourselves with the letter only, and 
,we are at one with the author in his work. The man 
who knows three languages is, as Mrs. Malaprop has 
it, 'like Cerberus, three gentlemen at once.' 



LANGUAGE. 



97 



It is rather a startling fact in connection with the 
German language (but a fact nevertheless) that thirty- 
years ago no one in this island dreamt of learning it, 
and that as a branch of polite education it received no 
attention whatever in our schools. Do any of our 
grandfathers and grandmothers speak German ? Do 
even our parents ? And yet, since the days of George 
Lewis of Hanover, our Royal Family has spoken no 
other language ; or, to be accurate, no other language 
has been so familiar in their mouths. When the late 
Prince Consort came over to marry the Queen (and 
even for a long time subsequent to the date of that 
auspicious event) it was our insular humour to carica- 
ture the Germans ; to make rhymes upon their great 
pretensions and their small means ; to speak of them 
as though they were outer barbarians, and we the 
politest people under the sun. When we had exposed 
our own ignorance and want of culture, and had en- 
joyed this cheap form of wit until it was w 7 orn almost 
threadbare, a reaction set in, and it would, perhaps, 
be difficult nowadays to find an English household 
where there is not some pretence of learning German. 
In every school there are German governesses and 
masters, in countless households German maids and 
bonnes ; every little schoolmiss will rattle out her de- 
clensions for you, and be quite ready to air her Ger- 
man when her parents take her abroad for an autum- 
nal trip. Thousands of young English people are 
fanatics not only per la musicct, but also for the lan- 
guage, the poetry, the painting, the prowess, the Geist, 
and the greatness of the Deutschen Valerland. 

When George Lewis came over from Hanover with 
H 



9 s 



his miscellaneous following of frightful favourites — 
colonels a la suite, cooks and chamberlains, pages and 
courtiers — the good people of England shrugged their 
shoulders, laughed in their sleeves, made a virtue of 
necessity, and accepted the lesser of the two evils. 
Better Protestant George than Catholic James. Yet, 
though they set all the bells a-ringing, and flung their 
caps in the air, and shouted 4 God save the King !' they 
derided the King's High Dutch (which was not Dutch 
at all, but the Hoch-Deutsch of refined Teutonia), 
ridiculed his favourites, and spoke of the jargon of the 
motley crew as 4 neither speech nor language,' but a 
hideous sound excruciating to ears polite. The very 
expression ■ 'Tis all High Dutch to me ' (which not 
improbably came in with William III.) passed into a 
proverbial colloquialism, and was adopted, with that 
undiscriminating contempt for the finer shades of 
difference between foreigners that is one of our marked 
national characteristics, in the interest of the Hano- 
verian sovereigns. 

Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, was the only 
man who could speak to his Hanoverian Majesty in 
the German tongue ; and we have a droll picture of 
that monarch surrounded by his British ministers, all 
dumb by default ; Walpole barking out now and then, 
to the utter bewilderment and mystification of the 
King, a little ' dog-Latin,' and finally, in sheer despera- 
tion and vastly ccntrc-ccciir, literally k ' shoving' Carteret 
to the front, whilst his colleagues all stand round dis- 
mayed at the volubility with which that versatile 
nobleman addresses his sovereign in German. 'They 
listened,* says Lord Macaulay, 'with envy and terror 



LANGUAGE. 



99 



to the mysterious German gutturals, which sounded no 
sweeter in their ears from the fact that they might 
possibly convey suggestions very little in unison with 
their own wishes.' 

Perhaps we can scarcely be surprised that English- 
men were but little attracted to the study of the lan- 
guage of the kings who had come to rule over them. 
Had the Electress Sophia reigned in her son's stead, it 
might earlier have won its way to popularity ; but, as 
all the world knows, that lion-hearted old lady one 
day fell down (shortly before her son's accession) in 
the avenue her own hands had planted at Herren- 
hausen, never to rise again. It would not have been 
easy (after kissing hands) to have shrugged shoulders 
at this undaunted woman ; we are forced to respect 
her wherever we see her ; whether she be writing 
wise and witty letters to her daughter in Berlin, 
or walking with her friend and secretary Leibnitz, 
discussing, with the generous enthusiasm of a warm 
heart and a great mind, his plans for a united Chris- 
tendom, or his theory of Monads ; whether we see her 
as the lover of fountains and gardens and books, as 
the friend of Lessing, the correspondent of Bernoulli, 
the student of Boyle and Newton ; or whether as the 
spirited spouse of an inferior husband and the prudent 
mother of an ignoble son, the patient friend and 
kindly counsellor of both the coarse-natured men to 
whom she stood in the most intimate of relationships. 
It would have been impossible to despise the liberal- 
minded, shrewd, well-mannered woman, whose heart 
generally taught her the right thing, and whose tact 
was seldom at fault. Polite learning, the presence 



H 2 



IOO 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of men of letters at Court, the gracious influence of a 
kindly, capable queen, who, if she now and again 
called a spade a spade (the times were not squeamish), 
did it after that sturdy Elizabethan fashion of rapping 
out round statements in unvarnished terms, that had 
come to be looked upon with a certain appreciative 
leniency by the loyal lieges of England, would have 
gone far towards making the Hanoverian succession 
acceptable. But this hardy princess was not destined 
to win popularity for her son. While she was yet in- 
full enjoyment of the active mind in the active body,, 
pursuing her daily ' constitutional,' fair weather or foul,, 
her simple regimen, her rational mode of life, death 
overtook her in the gardens she loved so well, at the 
ripe old age of eighty-four. 

George I. confessedly hated everything English,, 
and adored everything Hanoverian ; so when he 
packed up his fourgons, and departed with the ladies 
Kielmansegge and Schulenberg to his own country,, 
the English nation was not inconsolable. 

When George 1 1., who not only hated England much 
worse than did George I., but included 'boetry and 
bainting ' in the list of his dislikes, retired to his be- 
loved Herrenhausen with Lady Yarmouth, alias Wal- 
moden, leaving the Queen and ministers to govern 
for him during the two years he spent in the shades 
of that classic retreat, history does not record that any 
lamentations were uttered at his absence, nor is it 
probable that tears fell, unless, perhaps, from the eyes 
of that gifted, beautiful, outraged, forgiving, and 
altogether incomprehensibly devoted queen, Caroline 
of Anspach. 

As we go through the Georgian reigns, we can 



LANGUAGE. 



ior 



find nothing to attract the English people to the study 
of the German language. ' Let them take back their 
manners and their morals to the land whence they 
came,' said the people, who tolerated, ridiculed, lam- 
pooned, and retained these singular sovereigns because 
they had at least the wisdom to accept the situation 
and let ministers govern. The earlier Hanoverians 
remained strangers in feeling to their English dominions; 
and even George III., whose proud boast it was that 
he was born an Englishman, with an English heart — 
i entirely English ' (as Queen Mary and her Orange 
William also declared of their own tender organs) — 
would have been better liked if he could have taken 
to wife any other than the little, plain, proud, preju- 
diced German princess, whose correct conduct and 
blameless behaviour even posterity finds hardly to 
outbalance her narrowness, her etiquette worship, her 
rigour, and her shabbiness. The nation, which had 
ridiculed the vulgar vices of the earlier Guelphs, now 
laughed at the homebaked virtues of Farmer George. 
The dulness, the decency, the conjugal devotion of the 
sovereign, the meanness, and morality, and morgue of 
the shabby little Queen, are subjects for the satires of 
the age. Virtue and sobriety were all very well, but 
people began to remember that there were other royal 
virtues besides. All these great people come down to 
us, in the memoirs and letters of their times, with a 
tinge of ridicule upon them. Hervey, bitter and 
brilliant, scourges them with satire ; Walpole's witti- 
cisms delight his friends; Selwyn enchants society with 
his bons mots ; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds her 
sides and laughs ; Topham Beauclerc goes about 
saying good things ; Bubb Doddington writes his 



102 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



diary ; Gillray tickles the town with his caricatures ; 
everyone laughs ; and nobody learns German. The 
Court is respectable, but ridiculous ; and not even the 
Burneys and Delanys of the period carry devotion so 
far as to flatter in the accents of the Fatherland. The 
episode of Caroline of Brunswick did nothing towards 
popularising the language or manners of the country 
whence she came ; and when ' the Georges ended,' and 
William IV. had also passed away, our knowledge of 
the German language was scarcely more widely 
diffused than it had been a century and a quarter before 
the accession of our present sovereign ; although in 
literary circles, stimulated chiefly by Mr. Carlyle's 
early essays, the works of [Goethe, Schiller, Richter, 
&c, began to excite some attention. 

German merchants coming to England, if they did 
not know the language already, learned it so easily 
that in commerce, at least, there was no necessity for 
us to puzzle our unlinguistic brains with German ; in 
the polite world, the acme of elegance and erudition 
was supposed to be attained if you could speak a little 
French of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe. There 
was no call for German professors in our schools ; but 
within the next twenty years the study of German 
had become universal, and within another ten was 
considered generally necessary to education. 

Much of this is due, in our opinion, to the national 
appreciation, both deep and wide, of the character of 
our admirable Queen, and also to the presence 
amongst us of one, i modest, kindly, all-accomplished, 
wise,' whose claims to our respect won us to forgive 
the ' Foreigner,' to forget the ' Prince,' and to accord 



LANGUAGE. 



103 



our tardy tribute of recognition to the Man. We 
gradually came to appreciate justly the noble influences 
of a cultured mind and blameless life, ' laborious for 
our people and our poor.' 

It could hardly be said, even by the most ardent 
lovers of the German language, that it is musical ; and 
it is no uncommon thing to hear persons who neither 
understand nor speak it declare that it is simply 
' hideous.' Perhaps they have never heard German of 
the best kind. Shouted in every variety of accent and 
dialect — Austrian, Prussian, Saxon, Bavarian, Rhenish 
— it is, to say the least of it, a bewildering experience, 
a very Babel of Babels. But pure Hanoverian German 
(indeed, the German of most of the Northern States), 
spoken by refined lips, without rasping of the throat 
or muscular contortion, is far from unpleasant, whilst 
the language heard on the banks of the Leine is in 
truth the lingua toscana in bocca romana of the 
North. 

It must be remembered that every little princedom 
and dukedom has its own special idioms, its own pecu- 
liarities of pronunciation, and that these are uncon- 
sciously adopted by the cultured and refined, and 
cannot be regarded as provincialisms would be in a 
country where one acknowledged standard was the 
accepted rule. An acute ear will readily detect the 
differences that distinguish the dialects of the North 
and the South, and be able to fix the Heimath of 
the speaker with tolerable precision. The speech of the 
Prussian, for instance, will at once bewray him. The 
g which becomes y ; the ei which is ec in the Berlinese ; 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the struggle of every true son of the Spree between 
the dative and the accusative ; the clipping of syllables, 
as in the sweet, homely Bavarian greeting, ' Griiss Di' 
(Dich) Gott ; ' the alteration of the diminutives ' chen ' 
and ' lein,' as in BiscJien, Herzlein, into Bissl, Herzl ; 
the long-drawn a of the yet pleasant tongue of Bruns- 
wick, that almost resembles the baa of a sheep ; 
the changing of the final ch into k, and ig into isk, 
and other varieties, too numerous to be detailed here, 
will at once puzzle and amuse the foreigner. ' Is 
it d hard or d soft ? ' is by no means an uncommon 
question, and means, ' Is it d ox tV The utter inability 
of the dwellers in certain districts to settle this knotty 
point, and to discern any difference between what they 
oddly enough call ' b hard or b soft,' produces a confu- 
sion worse than maddening to the unaccustomed ear. 

The Germans, by the way, have not altogether 
conquered the pronunciation of the French language. 
A fete champetre becomes a fete champ eter. Ja- 
mais is pronounced chamais, and b's, vs, and fs 
prove stumbling-blocks not always easily overcome. 
Nor, proud as they justly are of their linguistic ac- 
complishments, is their English pronunciation always 
so perfect as their grammatical knowledge. No 
wonder that the whole party was paralysed by that 
ingenuous German gentleman who, simply wishing to 
state the respective ages of his wife and himself, said 
she was 'dirty' (thirty) and he was 'dirty-' (thirty) 'two.' 
' Elle est si /elle/ said a German lady to me, speaking 
of her daughter, ' elle est si /elle, ma Z>aulinchen ' 
(Pauline). ' Foyez comme ses mains sont holies, et 
comme elle a tc /eau /ras ! elle a la faille si/ien z>ak/e 



LANGUAGE. 



que c'es^un /rai ^laisir.' The kind lady (she was grande 

dame de la Cour to the Duchess of N , and might 

therefore be supposed to have enjoyed every advantage 
that education and refined intercourse could afford) 
thought I did not understand her native tongue, and 
thus addressed me in French. It was very puzzling ; 
and, but that the canons of courtesy forbade it, I should 
have begged her to return to her own vernacular. 

One is often startled by the strange coarseness of 
expression that passes unnoticed even in the best 
society. I remember an instance of this kind that will 
convey my meaning. If it offend ears polite, I would 
venture to plead in excuse that it was said by an 
ambassadress in a room where the crime de la crime of 
that particular society was assembled. We were en- 
joying an aesthetic tea : on the sofa sat a princess ; 
talking to the host was the heir apparent of the 
State in which we were sojourning ; there was a 
famous professor in the window button-holing an 
eminent statesman, and a whole herd of celebrities 
and insignificances scattered up and down the room. 
A little daughter of the house, going to the tea-table, 
took a cake from the cake-basket, and offered it to a 
poodle which was sitting, with a good deal of specula- 
tion in his eye, gazing upwards at the festive board. 
Suddenly the deferential utterances that were flowing 
from the mother's mouth stopped ; the princess was 
for the moment forgotten ; conversation came to a 
standstill, as her Excellency cried out in an agonised 
voice, ' Behiit' Dich Gott, mein Kind ! der Carlo hat 
sich ja schon zweimal heute iibergespei't.' I forbear 
the translation, though I cannot forego the illustra- 



io6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



tion. A Prussian gentleman, two Hanoverian ladies 
and an English dandy, startled in their sense of pro- 
priety, stopped for a moment in what they were 
saying to stare stiff surprise at the unvarnished state- 
ment, but otherwise no one appeared surprised or 
shocked : the prince and the princess, the excellencies 
and the professors, took it all as a matter of course, 
and the flow of soul was resumed as easily as though 
there had been no such interruption to their elegant 
utterances. 

The difficulty of the German language, its endless 
declensions, its complicated construction, the fact that 
not only for reading but also for writing another 
character is employed, may all have contributed 
their quota towards frightening people away from 
the study of so severe a tongue. From an archaeo- 
logical point of view it would be little short of sacrilege 
to consign the German alphabet to oblivion ; but a 
concession in the interests of learning has long since, 
been made in this direction, and scientific books are 
generally printed in Latin letters, the cramped and 
crabbed Gothic characters proving special stumbling- 
blocks of offence to the French eye. Germans them- 
selves, far from denying the difficulty of their language > 
frankly allow it to be great. Heine, recounting the 
educational tortures of his youth, says, in his simple, 
waggish way, ' At the same time I understood the 
German tongue better [than Hebrew]. W e had to take 
the learned Adelung on our backs, and torture our- 
selves and each other with accusatives and datives. 
Much of my German I learned from the old rector 
Schallmeyer, a brave, intelligent gentleman ; but I 



LANGUAGE. 



107 



learned something too from Professor Schramm, who 
had written a book on "The Everlasting Peace," and in 
whose class my fellow-rascals always fought most 
furiously.' 

As the song of a language can only be learned by 
living amongst the people who speak it, so also the 
Geist of a language can only enter into you after you 
have sojourned long within the borders where it is 
spoken, or (and this must be a very exceptional 
case) after a long and patient study of men's minds 
and manners as they come to us through their books. 
The German language is rich in literature : it is, in 
its spoken form, rough and rugged, but also grand and 
powerful ; its very gutturals give it a character and an 
originality not to be found in softer tongues ; its fine, 
rolling vowel-sounds, its jagged consonants, its plea- 
sant liquids (when they have come to be familiar to 
you), will have the same effect upon the mind that a 
fine landscape has upon the eye. It, more than any 
other, seems to be the language of nature ; there is 
power and nobleness in it {Kraft und Herrlichkcit), a 
sense as of great masses of primeval rock, open, sun- 
shiny plains, billowy forests, echoes, fountains, fertile 
meads, freshness, sunshine, spring flowers, storm and 
tempest, violets and Alpine roses, breadth of sight, 
vigour of sound, freedom, hope. There is not the 
luxury and languor of the South, none of the melting 
beauty and sultry splendour of softer climes ; but there 
is muscle, and strength, and endurance in it. But the 
written language has a curious cumbersomeness of 
construction little less than cruel. The complex and 
often apparently inextricably involved sentences send 



108 GERMAN HOME LIFE. 

the student back again and again to the beginning of 
the proposition, which appears to have lost itself 
vaguely in space. The speaker, or the writer, circles 
round and round his idea, and only descends upon the 
pith of the matter after long sweeps of pitiless expla- 
nation, parenthesis, amplification, mystification, and 
general confusion worse confounded. Your ardent 
spirit will very likely chafe under this circumlocutory 
torture, and you will be tempted to remind your man 
that it is not 'always afternoon.' You will with difficulty 
restrain yourself from saying to him, ■ Skip all that, 
and come to the point ; ' and, in the strain your mind 
undergoes in your attempt to follow him through the 
mazes of composition, you will suddenly awake, with 
a start of horror, to the fact that you have dropped all 
the threads you thought you held in your hand, and 
that the narrative has become blank mystery to you. 

Let it console the modest student to know that it 
is beginning to be recognised amongst those of the 
new school that a plain style is better than an ornate 
one, that there is no real necessity for keeping you 
waiting through two pages and a half for the verb 
which is the key you want to unlock the enigma. 
Philologers, purists, and patriots are doing their best 
in this direction, and the pruning-hook has already 
been taken up in the interests of a wider humanity. 

There is no royal road to learning ; but there are, 
for him (or her) who can study German in the Father- 
land, many pleasant aids to acquiring a decent know- 
ledge of the language. First of all, there is that agree- 
able medium of instruction, the stage. The classic 
plays through which you have painfully stumbled with 



LANGUAGE. 



the aid of a dictionary are offered to you here in a more 
attractive form ; you hear a pleasant language, you 
are enlightened by a correct emphasis ; this or that 
passage, which only superinduced a weariness of spirit 
as you laboured at it in your room, impresses itself 
on your mind as it falls from the lips of a charming 
actress. You perhaps have your book in your pocket, 
and if you are not too proud or too shy, you will take 
it out and follow the play all through with a pleasure 
and an interest that you never thought to feel in what 
had seemed, erewhile, the very essence of boredom. 
You see modern comedy too ; you learn the manners 
and the language of polite society. The very songs 
of the operas that hum in your ears are of use to you; 
they familiarise you with the form of the language, 
and help you to construct your own simple sentences. 

Another great help will be found in the lyric poetry 
of Germany. You will probably have had Schiller's 
' History of the Thirty Years' War ' put into your 
hands, and recommended to your attentive consider 
ration as a model of style. But German prose, even 
the best, is apt to be terribly prosy. Heine, it is true, 
speaks of his own gottliche Prosa w T ith the enthusiasm 
of conviction ; but it may be fairly doubted whether 
anyone, not to the manner born, could ever be brought 
to acknowledge that any German prose was ' divine.' 
The very inflexions and inversions, however, of which 
we complain in the prose are but so many added 
strings to the harp that the poet holds in his hands. 
At the magic of the ' maker's ' touch the difficulties 
disappear, and an infinite variety of modulation and 
expression is the result. No one who reads his Goethe 



no 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



and his Schiller, his Heine and his Geibel, can com- 
plain of mystification or bewilderment. German 
poetry is never obscure. The poets of the Munich 
school follow in the lead of simplicity set by the 
greater of the moderns ; and it would be difficult to 
imagine anything at once more fragrant and more 
finished than the lyric utterances of the minor poets 
of modern Germany. There is an easiness, a charm, 
a propriety of expression about such simple songs as 
makes them melodious to the ear and easy to the 
tongue. The mind catches the charm, and without 
stress or strain memory retains the words. 

It happened once to the writer of these pages to 
be snow- and ice-bound during four months in a deso- 
late little tow T n on the bleak shores of the Baltic. 
She knew little or no German. Tauchnitz editions 
were unknown luxuries in the land. Intercourse 
with the outer world there was none. The great 
black crows walked up and down the silent streets 
seeking sustenance ; the smaller birds fell frozen from 
the trees ; a death-shroud lay upon the world. For 
weeks the winding-sheet of snow was not unwrapped ; 
it was a dismal, bitter time. By chance a German 
edition of Thackeray's works fell into her hands. She 
knew the original almost by heart. Desperation and 
desmivrement combined moved her to an experiment. 
She sat down to study Becky Sharp's sallies in the 
Teutonic ; she was led on to see what dandy George 
and blundering Dobbin would make of it in their 
foreign garb, and whether Amelia's simperings would 
be as tiresome now as then. No dictionary was 
needed when every word of the original was familiar :; 



LANGUAGE. 



in 



and at the end of three months she knew more German 
than she would probably have learned out of Ollen- 
dorff, Otto, or Ahn in thrice that space of time. It 
may be an irregular method, and can (alas for hu- 
manity !) never supersede grammars and dictionaries ; 
but it was, so far as it went, perfectly successful, and 
she ventures to recommend it, in combination of 
course with the recognised instruments of torture, to 
the feebler of her friends. 

The German novel is usually a dull diversion, 
though Auerbach, Paul Heyse, Corvinus, Marlitt, and 
others have done much to redeem it from this re- 
proach. The genius of the German language does 
not lend itself well to joking ; a German joke is, as a 
rule, but a wooden-jointed attempt at wit. Perhaps 
the best specimens of jeux d' esprit are to be heard 
from the Straszenjugend of Berlin and Vienna ; 
with this marked distinction in the quality of their 
jokes, that whereas the Berlin gamin has caught the 
universal captious tone of the Prussian capital (the 
Berlin public is nothing if not critical), and sneers out 
his cynicisms with appalling effrontery, the Viennese 
vagabond is always good-natured. He loves his jest, 
and he will have it at your expense rather than forego 
it altogether ; but it shall hurt you as little as possible. 
His laughing eyes make you forget his ribald tongue. 
He jokes to amuse himself, not to vex others ; and if 
he be personal, he is also always genial and gemiithlich 
in his jocularity. One thing that will strike every 
student of German who hears and learns the language 
for the first time in the Fatherland is the vast num- 
ber of hybrid Franco-Germanic expressions that meet 



1 12 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the ear. Learning German out of a grammar and 
reading it with a dictionary will by no means convey 
the same impression to the mind. It is in the collo- 
quialisms of daily life that this special vice is more 
particularly apparent ; and though patriots and purists 
are doing their best to uproot the jargon and to intro- 
duce purely German words in place of those German- 
ised Gallicisms, the evil is too deeply rooted and of 
too old a standing for reform to meet with any imme- 
diate perceptible success. 

It must be remembered, in extenuation of German 
crimes in this particular, that the Thirty Years' War 
had extinguished every spark of the old National 
Imperial spirit. An emperor still reigned ; but the 
country was divided into numberless little States, and 
with this mapping out of the Empire the reign of 
particularism (to use the slang of the moment) had 
already begun. Frederick the Great, the man who 
consolidated Prussia, and gave her a history, was 
patriotic only in his politics. His tastes, his ' proclivi- 
ties/ were purely French ; he spoke the French lan- 
guage by preference ; he w T as at no pains to disguise 
his contempt for everything German in intellectual 
matters ; he corresponded w r ith Maupertuis and took 
the Grand Persifleur to his meagre bosom, and as 
nearly loved him as he could love anyone ; he blew little 
twirligig French airs on his flute, and wrote long French 
letters and hideous French poetry to the ungrateful 
philosopher ; and the Court, and all the little Courts 
that were his neighbours, followed his enlightened 
example and danced to the great-little man's piping. 
Voltaire ran away after two years of it, and laughed 



LANGUAGE. 



at the caperings and antics he had left behind him ; 
but, nevertheless, French manners, French fashions, 
and the French language were universally adopted at 
Court, where the vulgarity of the mother tongue would 
not for a moment have been tolerated. We look 
round Germany and we see all the princelets and 
dukelings imitating the doings at Versailles. Whether 
it be at Wilhelmshohe or at Ludwigslust, at Her- 
renhausen or at Nymphenburg, at Charlottenburg or 
at Schonbrunn, the same Francomania exists ; people 
seem almost ashamed of their nationality, and take 
refuge in the cosmopolitomania that appears to pro- 
mise so much and means so little. Even Lessing, a 
German amongst Germans, from the point of view of 
literature, is not ashamed to say that of the love of 
country he ' has no conception, for that at the best it 
appears to him to be a sort of heroic weakness, 
which,' he adds, ' he is right glad to be without.' 

As we pass wondering on, we come to the lowest 
point of Germany's humiliation in the Napoleonic 
occupation. By that time there had been almost 
French enough heard within their borders to satisfy 
the wildest Francomaniacs, yet — however unwelcome 
a reminiscence to those whom it chiefly concerns — it 
cannot be denied that a certain reflected glory was 
felt, by some of the subjugated States, to shine upon 
them in the conqueror's startling successes. Napo- 
leonic alliances softened much that might otherwise 
have been bitter, and engaged those families over 
whom the French Emperor had thrown his iron yoke, 
and bound to him for better for worse by the gilded 
bonds of matrimony, to accept the situation and 

I 



ii4 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



range themselves on the side of the stranger. Theirs 
was the valour of discretion ; and if the yoke galled, 
no one saw the ugly mark, for it was worn under the 
garb of a laughing philosophy. The little King of 
Rome's cradle held two empires together ; Baden and 
Bavaria were pledged body and soul ; the nearer the 
throne the more French, the less German. In Vienna, 
where the gay, pleasure-loving Austrians had more 
readily adapted themselves to the decrees of fate than 
had their ruggeder Northern brethren, French man- 
ners and dress were universally adopted by all the 
higher classes of society ; French uniforms were as 
common as German on the parade-grounds; and 
whether the Corsican or the Hapsburg lay in imperial 
chambers, whether the traditional grey great-coat and 
cocked hat of le Petit Caporal or the white tunic of 
the gentle Joseph perambulated their kings' palaces, 
the people were equally contented, provided only the 
situation afforded spectacle enough for their enter- 
tainment. 

Frau von Pichler, in her ' Denkwiirdigkeiten,' tells 
us that on the occasion of the Congress of Vienna a 
favourite actress won immense applause in an other- 
wise mediocre piece by repeating with emphasis the 
following quatrain : — 

< Foreign manners, foreign fashion, 

Foreign morals, foreign yoke, 
We accepted, and "with passion" 
In a foreign language spoke.' 

And the lively lady was much amused by hearing a 
fair creature in the next box sigh out, sentimentally, 
< Ah ! e'est quelle a bien raison, celle-la ! ' The 
reaction came to Germany, as we all know ; but her 
language to the present hour bears traces of the 



LANGUAGE. 



servile imitation of years ; of the mean compromise 
that in compliment to her conquerors grafted German 
buds on to French stocks. 

Goethe, the greatest of the Germans, had, like 
Lessing, no idea of the patriotic sentiment ; Germany 
was a geographical fiction in his eyes. He knew 
Weimar, and he knew Frankfort, but he couia nor 
recognise a 1 nation.' When Napoleon had threatened 
his master, Goethe rose for a moment to enthusiasm ; 
but when the whole nation rose, he remained passive. 
< Shake your fetters ; the man is too great for you ! ' he 
says to one, and to another, who strives to excite in 
him a hatred of France, he answers, ' I have often felt 
a bitter pain at the thought that the German people, 
so honourable as individuals, should be so miserable 
as a w r hole. A comparison of the German people 
with other peoples awakens a painful feeling which I 
try to escape in any way I can/ Such discouraging 
words as these, spoken by a great man— by their 
greatest man— in the hour of intense national excite- 
ment, are significant indeed ; and it is not so many 
years ago as late events might lead us to believe since 
Prince Bismarck, in an impassioned speech on the 
Jewish disabilities, flung a similar reproach at his 
countrymen. ' I would call the attention of those 
gentlemen,' he said, * who are so fond of seeking their 
ideal outre-Rhin and ontre-mer, to one distinguishing 
trait in the character of the Frenchman and the 
Englishman ; that is, to the proud feeling of national 
honour, which does not so easily fall down in admira- 
tion of foreign institutions as is unfortunately the case 
with us/ It reads like a fable that the Prussian 

I 2 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Chambers should be taunted with a want of patriot- 
ism. 'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis!' 
Prussian patriotism has of late years become some- 
what oppressive, and we are apt at times to forget 
that it has not always deserved this reproach. 

The uneducated English mind has only one idea 
of a ' foreigner/ and that is, that he must necessarily 
be a Frenchman. Beyond this the Philistine imagi- 
nation cannot go. It is, however, surprising when we 
find persons of culture making the same mistake. 
There is no greater bevue in the present day (I would 
use the word ' blunder,' but it does not exactly convey 
my meaning) than to persistently address Germans as 
Monsieur and Madame.. It is a political offence as 
well as a social one. There is amongst us a stupid 
prejudice against the word Frau (we immediately 
picture to ourselves a procession of hideous Dutch 
'vrouwen, and recall all the obliging things that bluff 
King Hal said of poor Anne of Cleves) ; but as true 
politeness consists in putting ourselves in the place of 
the person we are addressing, and as we read every 
day of our Princess Royal in German papers as the 
'Frau Kronprinzessinn, we should do well to lay aside 
this childish objection, and to understand that German 
ladies and gentlemen prefer being spoken of by 
German prefixes, and addressed by their own proper 
appellations. Every educated German understands 
English, and you are quite justified, if you do not 
speak the language of the person you are addressing, 
in calling him 'your Highness,' or 'your Excellency/ 
Sc.; but you are not justified in forcing French names 
and titles upon him ; and, in doing so, you are guilty 
(no ' doubt unwittingly) of a want of courtesy and 



LANGUAGE. 



117 



good breeding that a moment's reflection will lead 
you to avoid. ' So 'ne rechte Kramer's Matame ! ' an 
old servant once said to me ; conveying in a suffi- 
ciently expressive manner her contempt for the 
underbred airs of some small shopkeeper's wife, who 
imagined that she was doing the correct and < fashion- 
able ' thing by adopting a French prefix. As well 
(and better, if we would not exasperate national feel- 
ing) might we address our fair German friends as 
Signora or Donna ; the words Madame or Monsieur 
can only be used appropriately when the persons 
addressed are French, or the conversation is being- 
carried on entirely in that language. How much 
nobler, for instance, is that fine old German title FreU 
herr (' Free-Lord '), and Freinn (' Free-Lady '), than 
the equivalents Baron and Baroness ! In the Freiherr 
w r e see the stately representative of feudal times ; the 
protector of his vassals, ' free-lord ' of himself, but 
faithful in his allegiance to the crown he supports : 
in the ' Baron 1 we see the outcome to our modern 
civilisation, the haunter of Monaco and Baden ; a 
man in gants glaces ; made by his tailor, marred by a 
life of false excitement and doubtful pleasures, with 
no reputation to speak of and no convictions worth 
mentioning. It may be said the comparison is unfair ; 
that there are exceptions, &c. &c. Granted. But as 
I stood lately in a distant Gottesaeker, and read 
the inscriptions on two tombstones side by side, I 
could not but feel how far more dignified was the 
1 free-lord ' of feudal times than the modern 4 Monsieur 
le Baron ' of the Boulevards and the gaming-tables > 
though the latter may be a development of species. 



n8 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Prince Bismarck, in a circular recently addressed 
to foreign Governments, has notified his opinion of 
the ridiculous prejudice that would fain make French 
the language of the world. In this note he says that 
the diplomatic correspondence shall be carried on 
between Berlin and each Power in the language of the 
Power addressed', and he requests (if German be not 
used in reply) that the language of the country with 
which the Foreign Office is in correspondence may 
be employed. The German F. O. is equal to the occa- 
sion; English, French, Spanish, Italian, nothing comes 
amiss to its clever clerks and ambitious attache's. 
Let the other nations make themselves comfortable, 
and write in their own vernacular ; for the German 
secretaries i unknown tongues ' do not exist ; and if 
they did, it would be the business of every man to 
overcome any little difficulty of the kind without hesi- 
tation ; they are there to do their duty, and they will do 
it with a zeal and thoroughness that knows no bounds. 

Since the Emperor of Germany visited Italy, il Re 
galantnomo has ordered that the officers of the Italian 
army shall forthwith apply themselves to the study of 
German. One can scarcely imagine that the languid, 
lazy, liquid Italian tongue will take very kindly to 
the rugged accents of the once hated lingua tedesca. 

On the language of German journalism we can 
barely touch at this moment. It more nearly ap- 
proaches the American model in style than that of 
any other country. To say that it is ' tall ' is to say 
nothing ; it is always on the high horse ; it is pom- 
pous, prancing, and aggressive ; there is a gush and 
garrulity about it that is infinitely vapid and fatiguing. 



LANGUAGE. 



119 



It twirls its moustache and clanks its spurs, and stalks 
over you. Your mind falls down fatigued by its 
inflated verbosity ; your taste is outraged by its 
wearisome egotism, and your finer sense revolted by 
the dirty paper and poisonous ink that are the media 
of all this grand writing and high-flown sentiment. 

At the language of official life, at the ridiculous 
titles official people claim, we have already glanced. 
The exactions in this direction are almost sufficient to 
frighten a simple-minded person out of society. Have 
you given the right man the right title ? Is he a 
-GelieimeratJi or a wirklicher Geheimerath ? Was that 
prince who affably condescended to address you a 
Royal, or a Transparent, or a Serene Highness ? You 
•have just addressed a lady (who has no right to the 
title) as Excelleiiz y and made her your implacable 
enemy for life. You have occasion to write to a 
Roman Catholic clergyman, and you for ever offend 
him by addressing him as Ezv. Hochehrwurden, which 
is a Protestant title, instead of Ew. Hochiviirdeu } the 
correct Catholic style. How are you to know that 
•privy councillors and presidents exact the predicate 
Hochzvohlgeboren, which belongs of right to the no- 
bility ? (2nd class), and how can you guess that a 
count must be addressed as ' High-born ' (Hochge- 
boreii), or even, under some circumstances, as Ef~ 
laiicht, a baron as High-well-born {Hochzvoh/geboreji) ; 
and that the common herd exact Wolilgeboren as well 
as their own patronymic on the letters you address to 
them ? It once occurred to the writer of these pages 
to have occasion to send to a little Jew shopkeeper 
for a reel of silk or a skein of wool. The nearest 



120 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



townlet was ten miles distant, and being unwilling to 
trust her commission to the rustic messenger, she 
wrote a note, dictated by a kind relative, to the shop- 
keeper in question. Left to herself, she addressed it 
to i Herr Meyer, Linendraper,' adding the name of the 
town, and deposited the letter on the hall table* 
' What ! will you, then, insult the people ? ' cried a 
critical and choleric cousin, snatching up the poor 
little missive; ' you blame yourself (' Du blaniirst 
Dich 9 ), my best one, by such ignorance of the forms ! ■ 
and stripping off the offensive cover, he re-enclosed 
it, writing in a fine, flourishing hand, 'To the Well- 
born Herrn Jacob Meyer, Merchant ' {Kaiifmami). I 
felt quite ashamed to enclose the twopence-halfpenny 
that w 7 as to cover my debt in the face of such a 
grandiloquent address as this ; the very poetry of 
commerce could do no more than build up such a 
structure on the foundation of the little Hebrew 
huckster's obscure shop. 

Altogether the address upon a German letter is a 
serious affair, and cannot be attempted in any light 
spirit of enterprise. You have to consider your de- 
clensions, and to call to mind all the social and official 
prerogatives of the person you are addressing. No 
such slipshod, easy familiarity as ' General Smith ' or 
4 Colonel Jones ' can be tolerated. You must begin in 
one corner of the envelope, and, if you wish to be 
decent, end in the other, as — 

' Seiner Hochgeboren 
dem Grafen 
Adalbert von Kanonendonner, 
Maj or- General - 1 n spekteur 

der K.K. Artillerie u.s.w., 
Hieselbst.,' 



LANGUAGE. 



121 



or wherever else he may be ; and if your friend hold 
a civil appointment, a far more elaborate address will 
probably adorn the superscription. 

In society a married lady is always addressed with 
the prefix of Gnddige, or Gnddigste, Fran (' gracious, 
or most gracious, lady'). If she have a title, it is not 
customary to use the family names in speaking to her, 
Fran Grdfinn, or Fran Baroninn, being deemed suffi- 
cient. Many persons use Meine Gnddigste ('my most 
gracious '), without further designation. Amongst 
female friends the formula is somewhat less ceremo- 
nious, Licbc Grdfinn, or Generalinn, or Geheimerdthimi 
being sufficient. Young ladies are not addressed as 
' Miss 1 So-and-so, but, by gentlemen invariably, as 
Mem gnddiges Fraulein. In Vienna the title Com- 
tesse, in contradistinction to Grafinn, is only employed 
towards unmarried ladies. It is not customary to say 
' Colonel Rag/ or ' Major Famish ; ' Herr Oberst 
and Herr Major are the correct forms ; Herr 
Hanptmann and Herr Lietttenant. In speaking of 
these gentlemen you may of course mention the 
family name of both the Rags and the Famishes. I 
may give an illustration of my meaning in the follow- 
ing experiences. I was equally well acquainted with 
a Baron Wolff and a Baron Behr, both members of 
well-known Courland families, but I never could 
remember which was which. It was of no great con- 
sequence, as safety was afforded in the convenient 
Herr Baron ; but on more than one occasion it so 
happened that I had to speak of these gentlemen 
when others of the same rank were present. I was 
obliged to particularise, and I made a shot at the 



122 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Wolff. The next time I took desperate aim, and it 
was at the Behr. I fancied fate had favoured me 
until a cloud on the countenance of the latter gentle- 
man informed me I had blundered. Meeting him a 
few days later in a shady avenue, he accosted me with 
a stiffness that was barely tempered by its cold 
civility. ' I have perceived, my most gracious,' he 
said, ' that you are in the dark as to my most insig- 
nificant personality (' meine hochst unbedeutende Per- 
sonlichkeit '). You have on several occasions spoken of 
me in my presence as Baron Wolff; now, allow me to 
tell you that the Wolves are not to be compared with 
the Bears.' Crushed as I was by his morgue and 
magnificence, I could not but smile (as I muttered 
out my confused apologies) at the serious tone of his 
reproof. 

If all these dangers and difficulties should dis- 
courage any of my readers, let me say for their 
consolation that not only are all educated Germans 
(and all Germans are more or less educated — generally 
more) accomplished linguists, but they have none of 
the mauvaise honte of Englishmen in airing their gift 
of tongues ; and if the pronunciation be not always 
musical, it is always intelligible, so that they will 
always speak to you in your own tongue, if you 
decline venturing into theirs ; and further, that no- 
thing can exceed the kindly patience with which they 
will listen to, and help one out of, conversational 
difficulties In their own language. There is no ridi- 
cule, nothing wounding to the most sensitive suscep- 
tibilities, in the broad smile that beams over their 
friendly faces as you go plunging about in the dismal 



LANGUAGE. 



123 



swamp of declensions ; they stretch out a firm helping 
hand, and land you on terra firma by their timely aid, 
without so much as noticing your embarrassment. 

Fatiguing alike, however, to alien ears and sense 
Is the vicious abuse of the adverbial and adjectival 
form in the language of everyday life. An adjective 
and a note of admiration will serve, for instance, to 
express the feelings of a family all round. The emo- 
tions of a group surveying the beauties of Saxon 
Switzerland, or the Rhine, will be rendered as fol- 
lows : — Mama : i Reizend ! ' Sophie : ' Himmlisch ! ' 
Adelheid : ' Wunderschon ! ' Helga : ' Bezaubernd ! ' 
Charlotte : ' Entzuckend ! ' and so on ad infinitum. 
At first, especially if the group be one of pretty 
girls, each shrieking out her little note of spasmodic 
admiration in a higher key than the last, you 
will think this pretty animation very naive and 
charming, but by degrees it will pall upon you ; you 
will wish that they could be persuaded to utter a few 
consecutive sentences, or you will regret that they 
should have begun with the climax. It is a common 
mistake to suppose that German travellers are morose ; 
they are the most talkative of companions ; they talk 
pro bono, and, like Tennyson's brook, though men 
may come and men may go, they seem able to go on 
for ever. 

It is — amongst ladies especially, amongst unmar- 
ried ladies very especially — considered the correct 
thing to 'gush.' If you do not gush, you have 
no soul — no Geist, no Gemiith. But unlimited gush 
is apt to become tiresome ; and the exaggerated 
Virtue of enthusiasm not unfrequently degenerates 



124 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



into a disagreeable sloppiness of sentiment. * I hope,' 
said Goethe, in a fit of impatience at the fashion of 
sentimentality prevailing around him, ' that I may 
not hear the word Gemiitk in a German mouth for the 
next thirty years/ 

The servants of a German household address the 
children individually as ' Du,' until confirmation casts 
the toga virilis upon the shoulders of the boy, and 
gives the girl her equivalent feminine drapery. In 
ordinary households servants are addressed by their 
masters as ' Du : ' the form is more familiar, but it 
marks the subordinate position of the person so ad- 
dressed. In great houses, and indeed in some suffi- 
ciently modest establishments, ' Sie ' is employed in 
speaking to the Dienerschaft : it is more distant than 
4 Du,' but it implies a greater consideration for the in-r 
dividual to whom you are speaking. In old times 
servants, soldiers, and all inferiors were spoken to in 
the third person singular, as ' er ; ' but in the present 
day such a form of address would be looked upon as 
an outrage. Inferiors invariably use the third person 
plural in addressing their superiors : — ' Haben Frau 
Generalinn gerufen ? Excellenz haben befohlen. Herr 
Oberst sind wohl nicht unzufrieden ? ' The family is 
spoken of collectively as the Herrschaft by their ser- 
vants (royalties are mentioned by their equerries and 
aides as the hohe Herrschaft), and a lady will make 
use of the same formula towards a servant when 
speaking of the children ; she will tell him to fetch 
the kleine Herrschaft — not ' the children' — home. 

The language of German home life has, as most 
of my readers are probably aware, many a coaxing 



LANGUAGE. 



turn and caressing twist. The intimate i Du ' that 
marks near relationships, old friendships, or nearer 
and dearer connections in spc, consecrates the second 
person singular, in a special manner, to home life. 
How endearing are the 'chen' and 'lein' of domestic 
language, how sweet and soft 'mein Herzchen ' ('my 
little heart ') from a mother to her child ! how pretty 
and protecting ' mein Liebchen' (' my little love') from 
the youth to the maiden ! how tender to a mother's 
ears the ' Miitterchen ' and ' Mutterlein ' of a dearly 
loved daughter ! Perhaps to persons who do not 
know German such utterances are ' hideous ; ' to 
me they are full of simple pathos and beauty. The 
words Kindlein, Engclein, Mdgdlein, by their very 
sound alone, call up before our vision those charming 
German engravings where firm outline, pure form, 
and vigorous conception go hand in hand ; we see 
the candid brow, the well-opened, questioning eyes, 
the opulent plaits, the fearless, intelligent look, and 
we read, in a word, the poems of Childhood — of 
Maidenhood. 

How pretty is the ' Gesegnete Mahlzeit 1 (' May 
the meal be blessed to you ') of the friends whose 
hospitality you have shared, or of your neighbour at 
table, who, when the meal is ended, will turn to you 
with this graceful benediction ! How warm and simple 
the * Griiss Dich Gott ' (' God greet thee ') of some 
dear familiar friend ; how charming in feminine ears 
the courteous, ever-recurring Austrian * Ich kuss' die 
Hand/ that seems to recall the very days of chivalry! 
It is inconsistent (and worthy of a woman) to say that 
the lack of these and a hundred other such pleasant 



126 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



phrases makes conversation seem cold and bare, 
abrupt and discourteous, when, after a long residence 
in Germany, we return to the plain, unvarnished 
speech of English life, whose yea is yea and whose 
nay is nay. 



DRESS. 



127 



CHAPTER VI. 

DRESS. 

4 A myrtle, even in the desert, remains a myrtle. ' — Talmud. 

DRESS means something more than clothes, and these 
than covering. The fig-leaves of our first parents 
were but symbols, whereof the meaning is vastly 
more important than a mere superficial glance might 
suggest. Dress should, as far as is possible, translate 
to us the character of the wearer ; it should bear 
about it some individuality, some mark of special 
identity, so that we feel the husk or hull is in harmony 
with the kernel. 

It pleases us to think that Zenobia's zone and 
Flavia's fillet are matters of choice, not matters of 
chance; we smile on Cynthia's cestus and Sappho's 
sandals, and praise the peplum Phillis wears, because 
fillet, cestus, and sandals become the women that we 
love. 

Dress, to use a homely simile, should, like a filet 
de bceuf, be neither overdone nor underdone ; it should 
hit the happy medium. The dress of German ladies 
errs in both particulars ; that of the morning leaves 
much to be desired, that of the afternoon offers much 
that might be dispensed with. Without plenty of money 



128 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



we cannot have rich dress, but we may, none the less, 
have all that is essential to comeliness and comfort. 
We are bound, to use a commercial phrase, to make 
our appearance ' as good as we can for the money/ 
With well-arranged hair, tidy shoes, mended gloves, 
and clean linen at her throat and wrists, no woman 
can look ill. A poor lady in a plain black gown, with 
no other than such simple adornments, but with that 
sense of freshness and care about her that should 
always accompany a woman's presence, may look as 
noble as — aye, and far nobler than — all the puppets 
of the ' fashion plates,' or their more ambitious sister- 
hood, decked in the pre-Raphaelite millinery of mo- 
dern dilettante dress. A woman who respects herself 
and loves her husband will never be a dowd ; she 
dare not be a slattern. Large means may be denied 
her, but cleanliness and care are always within her 
reach ; and if, as has been somewhat hastily asserted, 
a woman's dress be the index of her mind, it behoves 
her all the more to see that it be w r ell ordered, scrupu- 
lous, and not devoid of dignity. 

In many a room where the furniture would not 
' bear daylight ' from an art, or even from an auc- 
tioneer's, point of view, a happy fancy, a pot of flowers, 
a cosy corner, a blooming window-ledge, a book, a 
sketch, a glint of sunshine, a dash of colour, an atmo- 
sphere indefinable, that tells of a woman's presence 
and a woman's care, may cover all the multitudinous 
sins of the offending tables and chairs, and make us 
forget, or even, better still, forgive, the general short- 
comings of the apartment. 

We like to believe of beauty that it would be as 



DRESS. 



129 



beautiful in the desert, for the sun and the sand and 
the sky, as it is in the ball-room, where, by one con- 
sent, it is crowned ' belle.' 

A German lady understands nothing of such wild 
theories ; she does not even appreciate the ' sweet 
civility ' that lies in the fact of a woman coming to 
her husband's or father's breakfast-table trim, fresh, 
and fragrant ; on the contrary, she issues from her 
bedroom in a loose wrapper, carpet or felt slippers, 
and with what, in your haste, you might call a night- 
cap. Courtesy demands that it shall be spoken of as 
a Morgenhaube, and in the sense that the nightcap 
proper has been taken off, and replaced by a less 
tumbled edition, we may accede to the term ; other- 
wise it has no pretension to be dignified by any finer 
name than you have given it. With hair undressed, 
and stuffed away in plaits or curls under the muslin 
topknot, in the most uncompromising of deshabilles, 
the lady presides over the scene of sloppy slovenliness 
to which allusion has been made in a former chapter. 
If you have seen her en toilette the night before, meet- 
ing her now you will scarcely recognise the fairy 
vision of your dreams. The elaborate frisure, where 
great masses of hair lay piled, Juno-like, above the 
brow, or rippled in sunny curls lovingly over the un- 
covered shoulders ; the sweeping silks, the charming 
coquetries, have all disappeared, vice a singularly un- 
attractive and ungraceful style of apparel promoted. 
At first you will imagine you have stumbled upon the 
housekeeper, who, suffering from dolorous tic, has 
arisen to a hasty performance of her morning duties 

K 



130 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and donned this surreptitious costume ; but (fortu- 
nately for German women) hospitality, as we under- 
stand it — the hospitality of spare rooms, that is — is a 
thing unknown, and the occasions when a stranger 
can gaze upon the Hansfrau degidsee en papillotes 
are necessarily very restricted. There is only the 
husband, and the husband knows no better; he would 
be startled out of his ordinary phlegma should his 
wife appear ' finished ' at that early hour of the day, 
and would think that sudden frenzy had seized her for 
its own. 

Many years ago, when Germany was as yet a 
terra incognita to me, I arrived late one evening at 
the gates of a grand ancestral Scldoss. The ladies 
assembled were in all the gloss of satin and glimmer 
of pearls. It was too late to tear open trunks and 
take out a fresh toilet. Dust-defaced and travel- 
stained, I sat dejectedly amongst them, and slowly 
and sadly resigned myself to circumstances ; but next 
morning I confessed that fate was not at all unkind. 
i Good morning, my dear,' said my host ; ' but— but 
— you are mistaken ; we do not expect the Grand 
Duke ! ' I certainly had made no preparation for 
royalty, and only a dim understanding of the drift of 
his words dawned upon me as I gazed round on the 
dazzling creatures of the night before, and found they 
had all disappeared into nightcaps and dressing- 
gowns. What a falling-off was there ! 

Nevertheless, they were much displeased, and 
thought it betokened an insular arrogance when I 
ventured to remark that, if the Grand Duke had 
come, I should have made no change in my dress. 



DRESS. 



While they would have been scrambling out of their 
dressing-gowns, and screaming for their maids,I should 
have been calmly contented in my clean holland gown; 
but that you should dare to receive in a cotton gown 
a person of elevated rank coming unawares upon 
you betokens, to the German female mind, an insen- 
sibility and an ignorance of the bienseances that verges 
on criminal lunacy. You ought to show that you 
have ' dressed ' for the occasion. Any other behaviour 
is in their eyes mean, republican, vulgar, low, and quite 
inconsistent with those ideas of subjection in which 
every well-educated German woman has been edu- 
cated from her youth up. To be well dressed does 
not mean to wear the clothing most appropriate to 
the occasion, but to have on your last new gown, 
with, if possible, twenty yards more trimming and 
six dozen more buttons than anyone else has. In 
Germany women dress for the promenade, the coffee 
party, the theatre, the public gardens. As a rule, 
they have no great means at their command ; but with 
what they have they contrive to bring about as dis- 
astrous a result as their worst enemies could wish. They 
have no intuitions of the becoming ; they have not 
even the feminine ' instincts ' of dress ; the rudiments 
of it are as yet unknown to them. In second- and 
third-rate towns one draper and two or three milliners 
will supply all the resident belles. The result is 
a distressing monotony in the apparel that pervades 
the streets. Now and then some bolder spirit will be 
visited with ' inspiration 1 on the subject, but gene- 
rally after such a fashion as will cause you to return 
thanks that there are so few prophetesses in the land. 

K 2 



132 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Such flights of fancy are rarely viewed by the weaker- 
sisterhood with approbation, and ridicule is almost 
sure to overtake the wearer. Yet no one will annoy 
her in her native town. Her companions may 
covertly titter at her taste, intimate elbows be not too- 
well bred to nudge each other in notes of reprobation 
as she passes by ; one may jibe and another may 
jeer at the ill-assorted finery ; but as every citizen, 
street-boy, artisan, and factory girl has known the- 
wearer from her youth up, no palpable inconve- 
nience will result from poor Jenny Wren's little 
sumptuary experiments. 

German dress has no originality and no chic. It 
is snatched wildly, right and left, from French 
fashion-books and English advertisements, and the 
result of this hybrid combination is, if judged by the 
canons of taste, little short of atrocious. Of an inde- 
pendent yet modest simplicity of dress ; of the aesthetic 
treatment of such ' hulls ' as poor humanity is con- 
demned to wear, of the harmony of well-chosen 
low-toned tints ; of unity of effect in the corre- 
sponding shade of gloves, parasol, and bonnet, or the 
judicious juxtaposition of dark and light ; of a dash of 
colour on a sober background, the ordinary German 
woman knows nothing. She has not the courage to be 
plain if the ' Mode Journal ' says she is to be elaborate. 
Her clothes sin not even so much by ugliness as by 
inappropriateness. 

The pathetic results of want of taste and judg- 
ment in this matter of dress are more particularly- 
apparent in the case of elderly German women. 
The hair once thick is now thin, the neck once round 



DjRESS. 



133 



and white now coarse and red, the delicacy of feature 
and complexion a thing of the past ; all is hard, 
used, prosaic. The Frenchwoman puffs her delicate 
grey hair into feathery curls, hides the hollows, and 
repairs the ravages of time with cascades of lace ; 
graceful draperies soft as cobwebs set her face in a filmy 
framework, infinitely charming ; soft, tender shades 
of colour approach the faded cheek without outrag- 
ing it ; and English elderly ladies follow, with more 
or less success, in the same judicious train ; but 
the German woman shows her bald patches, her un- 
attractive throat, her awkward figure, without dis- 
guise and without remorse. No cap covers the 
wisp of hair that out of an abundant chevelure 
is all that remains to her ; there is neither grace 
nor dignity in her gown ; coarse collars and crot- 
chet frills tumble helplessly on her elderly shoul- 
ders. ' What does it matter ? ' is plainly written in 
the general neglect of her appearance, which strikes 
one painfully, less as an absence of vanity than 
as a want of self-respect. Younger folk can perhaps 
afford to be careless, but an elderly woman should be 
scrupulous ; she may even be a little elaborate as to 
her * setting ' and no one will rise up and reproach 
her. It is sweet and pleasant to see that she is care- 
ful for others long after all personal vanity is extinct ; 
that she arranges her drapeau de vieille femme grace- 
fully and still adorns the world, with which she has 
almost done, by a gracious presence. 

Perhaps in no country is dress so much talked of 
as in Germany, with so little result. Tartans of the 
most eccentric colours and arrangements are always 



134 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



en vogue. Let the fashion-books say they are mode? 
they become the rage. They bear no resemblance 
to the clan-tartans with which we are all more or less 
familiar ; they are lurid combinations of clashing 
colours, evolved out of the enterprising manufac- 
turer's speculative brain, hideous and alarming to the 
unaccustomed eye. Let a woman be short, broad, 
and sandy ; she will clothe herself triumphantly in a 
scarlet and yellow tartan, and yet expect to be thought 
in her right mind. Let her be tall and sallow ; a dis- 
astrous green will check her angular person in dismal 
repetition from top to toe. 

There are certain aspects of toilette in which the 
Englishwoman is allowed all over the Continent to be 
unapproachable. Frenchwomen claim the precedence 
in their toilettes de luxe, toilettes de ville, toilettes de bal\ 
but they concede us the palm in the matter of travel- 
ling costume, in our hats and habits, in our umbrellas, 
walking-boots, and waterproofs. English travelling 
costumes, quiet in colour, tasteful, simple, elegant, and 
modest ; the snowy linen collars and cuffs, with their 
simple solid sleeve-links and throat brooch, that set 
off the brunette's dark skin and make the blonde 
more dazzling ; the tidy felt or straw hat, which no 
weather can spoil or put out of shape ; the neat um- 
brella, trimly furled ; the light waterproof ; the sen- 
sible boots, are all beginning to be imitated on the 
Continent ; but as yet German ladies have not exactly 
appreciated the gist of the matter. To them such a 
dress is more or less of a masquerade ; worn less for 
practical purposes than because it is ' the fashion to 
wear it.' They have never in their lives been accus- 



DRESS. 



T35 



tomed to the rough outdoor exercise to which the 
most gently bred amongst us are used from child- 
hood ; to them the ' constitutional ' is only known 
through English novels; they do not set off for a long 
stretch across the moor, or to walk to the neighbour- 
ing town, ' for the sake of the exercise.' Such mus- 
cular femininity is foreign to their lives ; and the dress 
that makes this sort of outdoor activity independent 
of elemental combinations must necessarily be an 
unwonted garb to them. They will perhaps have 
adopted the tweed or homespun costume ; but the 
material will be half cotton, and will shrink out of 
recognition in the first shower of rain ; the hat will 
be there, but, instead of leaving it unadorned, or 
gracing its native felt at most with a flat, unspoilable 
ribbon and wing, it will be covered with a forest of 
feeble feathers, that the wind and the mist will cause 
to droop dejectedly, like weeping willows, around the 
face of the disconsolate wearer. A sense of the fitness 
of things will tell a woman ' to the manner born ' that 
Balmoral boots and a homespun gown demand stout 
linen collars and cuffs ; but ruffles being ' the fashion/ 
the fair German plagiarist will carry tulle round her 
neck on a mountain tour, and, quite unconscious of 
incongruity, wear a huge Elizabethan frill with a coarse 
woollen costume. The same malignant showers that 
have played havoc with her hat and gown will have 
sent all the starch out of her frills and furbelows, 
and made them fertile sources of dissatisfaction : the 
thin stuff boots with sham holes, simulating good 
honest balmorals, are as useless as though she were 
shod with brown paper ; mountains cannot be climbed 



136 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



nor tempests defied in such a costume ; the whole 
thing will have turned out a delusion and a snare, and 
the temper of the disappointed traveller w r ill suffer, 
certainly partial, probably total, eclipse. 

■ The thing that charmed me most in our Swiss 
tour,' said a frank German gentleman to me, ' was to 
see the freedom, the enjoyment of life, the fresh 
spirits, of your English girls. They w r ere ready at 
any hour of the morning, fix und fertig ; they were 
everywhere ; they had one waterproof gown in which 
they made all their expeditions ; and their fathers and 
brothers seemed to find them no trouble. I liked to 
see their frank enjoyment. I liked their boots and 
stockings,' cried the ingenuous gentleman in a rapture 
of enthusiasm ; ' they were so trim and tidy that it 
didn't matter though it rained cats and dogs and 
pitchforks downwards ; they were ready for any 
weather and equal to all occasions.' 

Turning from such free open-air experiences to 
the closed doors of the early hours of the day in 
German home life, a striking contrast presents itself 
to us. During the forenoon, to such ladies as cannot 
indulge in the luxury of a maid, comes the Frisenseimi 
— as the ridiculous Gallo-Germanic word conveys, 
the female hairdresser. These women are an abomin- 
able institution, to be reprehended on more counts 
than one. Enough that they encourage idleness and 
slovenliness in the matter of that glory which a 
woman has upon her head. Until that is ' tired,' the 
lady, to use a feminine phrase, 'is not fit to be 
seen.' The Friscuseinu, like the barber of the comic 
operas, is a personage and a power; she knows 



137 



all the tattle of the town and the scandal of the 
neighbourhood. Her very occupation gives her op- 
portunities of gossip that make her dangerous, and 
allow her to study at her ease the weaknesses and 
defects, moral and physical, of those ladies who are 
deluded enough to employ her. Under strict pro- 
mises of secresy she imparts her titbit of gossip, and 
benevolently helps further on the road of slander any 
detrimental on dit that she hears by the way. She 
packs up her dirty brushes and combs, mangy fri- 
zettes, greasy ribbons and sponges, and goes cheer- 
fully her unclean way, bag in hand, leaving the lady 
free at last to cast her cap and wrapper and appear 
dressed for the day. 

The chrysalis has become a butterfly, able at 
length to breathe the outer air, and show its gorgeous 
hues to the outer world. On the promenade, where 
loungers most do congregate, the dilatory fair will 
probably meet many of her acquaintances ; dashing 
officers returning from parade will at once gladden 
her eyes and enliven the scene. The culminating point 
of satisfaction will be reached should happy chance 
send the hohe Herrschaft home from their morning drive 
that way. It is pretty to see the flutter of devotion 
and excitement with which these loyal ladies turn right 
about face (Fronte machai), and sink to the ground in 
the billowy bliss of a curtsey that literally beams with 
beatitude. It is good to think that there is still such 
blind belief in the world. The man may be a Blue 
Beard of the deepest dye ; he may lead a life scanda- 
lous to the beholder ; he may have the cruellest 
opinion of women, and never forego a sneer at their 



138 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



expense ; and yet, so be he the Prince that reigns 
over them, these devoted ladies will be ready to 
grovel before him in ineffable rapture. No doubt 
there are rude persons in Germany as elsewhere, to 
whom a grand duke is no more than any other man ; 
but ' society ' would be ready to stone that man or 
woman who should venture to declare, in the words 
of the most powerful sovereign that perhaps ever 
lived, that royalty is only entitled to respect in so far 
as it is ' respectable/ 

German ladies will tell you that the nature of their 
domestic occupations makes the cap and dressing- 
gown necessary evils ; that they could not go into the 
kitchen in anything that would spoil ; that the cap 
protects the hair from dust, and preserves it from the 
smell of frying-pans ; that the Schlafrock can be flung 
off at will, and with it all offensive odours and remi- 
niscences. But, whilst prepared to allow that the life 
of the ordinary German woman is little better than 
that of an upper servant, and inclined rather to pity 
the misfortune than to blame the fault, we cannot 
concede the position. If there be in the world any 
kitchen where a lady may potter harmlessly, that 
surely is the German kitchen, with its clean hot-plates, 
its well-washed brick floor, and total absence of dust 
or soot. Yet German ladies during morning hours 
are not nearly so much like ladies as our own cooks, 
who have scrubbed, and hearthstoned, and black- 
leaded, and swept, and sent up an elaborate break- 
fast, and yet are ready at ten o'clock to take orders 
for dinner in clean cotton gowns, tidy aprons, and 



JDjRESS. 



139 



trim caps. And again, everyone who has visited a 
German Badekur (where no frugal thoughts are al- 
lowed to disturb the hazes f rati lick mind) must be 
familiar with the Noah's-ark-like figures moving about 
in mushroom hats over frilled head-gear and long, 
shapeless morning gowns ; proving how wedded to 
this unbecoming costume are the fair wearers. This 
rooted sin of slovenliness, which gives up the greater 
part of' the morning to a -slatternly incognita, is one of 
the dearest privileges of the Hansfrau ; and, far from 
converting her from the error of her ways, by preach- 
ing a propaganda of trim morning attire, you will 
only arouse in her mind a contemptuous pity for the 
puppet existence that would presume to do away 
with the very insignia of virtuous domesticity. The 
Nemesis of a neglected toilette cannot overtake her 
as it is sure to overtake the ordinary active English- 
woman who ventures on the doubtful luxury of 
' breakfast in bed.' Shfe is not liable to antemeridian 
incursions ; the clergyman of the parish does not 
descend upon her for small and early charities ; aunts 
and cousins do not pop in on their way from shop- 
ping ; the gentle sluggard is not called upon to take 
her hat down from the hall peg and go round the 
garden with a neighbour who wants to see her roses ; 
enthusiastic youths (generally cousins) do not call 
upon her for unlimited admiration of what their rods 
have done since daybreak, nor do gushing girls rush 
in, all health and hoydenism, to get her to ' settle 
with mamma' about to-morrow's boating party or 
next week's picnic. She is safe from all intruders. 



140 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



The ladies that she knows are not yet ' fixed up ; • 
and the mysteries of their toilettes are equally with 
hers in the Morgeuland stage. 

It is not that one desires a woman ' still to be 
dressed as she were going to a feast' That is pre- 
cisely what one does not desire ; but one wishes to 
see her clean and unruffled ; clad with that scrupu- 
lousness and simplicity that are but the outer symbols 
of the purity and peace within. There is something 
elevating in contact with a woman of fresh and frag- 
rant presence. A gentle self-respect speaks to us 
through the care and propriety of her attire ; she 
endears herself to us by this indirect compliment paid 
to our presence ; her sweetness comes to us ennobled 
by a dignity which is but an added charm. It is 
difficult to be rude, or rough, or coarse in her spotless 
presence ; it is impossible to be unduly loud and 
familiar with a woman whose dress bears the impress 
at once of refinement and reserve. ' Cleanliness/ say 
the copy-books, ' is next to godliness,' and even the 
ungodliest man is ready to put off his mental shoes 
and acknowledge he is on holy ground in the presence 
of a pure and spotless woman. We do not like to 
think of any lady having to rush away in abject terror 
if by chance one of her husband's friends should call 
during the forenoon. Dress is not without its influ- 
ence on address. A woman in her right gown will 
seldom be in her wrong temper. She will feel at ease, 
not racked as to the ' sit ' of her bib and tucker, or 
exercised as to the angle of her topknot. Not need- 
ing to think of herself, she will be better able to think 
of her guests, and will enter into the conversation of 



DRESS. 



141 



the moment with a gaiety and gusto that will charm 
her visitors. Should, on the contrary, her gown ' gag/ 
her shoes be down at heel, her hair untidy, embarrass- 
ment and pre-occupation will sit heavy upon her. 

The evening dress of German ladies is far superior 
to their walking attire ; in the first place, it is appro- 
priate, the really beautiful hair of German women 
being seen to great advantage undisfigured by the 
Morgenkaube, or the often tasteless headgear of the 
promenade. Again, the sin of dirty white or faded 
coloured gowns is unknown ; crisp muslin and tarla- 
tan, fair fresh faces, and pretty gay-coloured toilettes 
make a German ball-room a pleasing spectacle. There 
is, perhaps, very little luxury, but many bright and 
charming effects, to be observed on such occasions. 

The daughters of the bourgeoisie have a particular 
affection for low dresses, and one is struck by the 
number of bare necks and shoulders that may be seen 
during an afternoon's walk or drive in the conspicuous 
summer-houses that border the roadway. But this, 
again, is only the clinging to an exploded fashion, for 
the pictures of the period tell us that our own grand- 
mothers and mothers went bare-necked in the days of 
their youth. 

Cosmetics, paints, and washes, auricomous fluids 
and Tyrian dyes, have not as yet entered into German 
home life. But amongst the ' upper ten ' they are as 
popular in Germany as elsewhere. Personal remarks 
are not, as with us, considered ill-bred. On the con- 
trary, they are almost de rigneur. If you do not 
admire loudly and openly, you will disappoint your 
friends ; and they will think their effect is not good, 



142 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and that all their efforts have been in vain. i Nein ! 
aber wie schon ! ' says a friend to you ; and whilst you 
modestly reply, ' No, really ; but you are yourself 
charming,' the same reciprocities will be passing all 
around you. No lady hesitates to ask where you got 
your gown, and how much it cost the ell. A friend 
of mine once travelled from the Dan of the North to 
the Beersheba of the South in a grey tweed water- 
proof costume ; and in every railway carriage she 
entered during the journey she was asked the price of 
the dress, the name of the material, and whence it 
came. With the reply, ' From England,' the unfailing 
remark, * Das hab' ich mir schon gleich gedacht,' 
showed the appreciative faculty of the gentle ques- 
tioners ; but the price outraged them. To spend such 
a sum on a mere travelling dress — on a dress that was 
to keep you warm, and dry, and comfortable ; that 
was light, and water-tight, and almost untearable — 
seemed to them an altogether unpardonable extrava- 
gance. 

German women are almost entirely without per- 
sonal vanity. Their solicitude about their clothes, the 
time spent in talking toilette, has its pathetic as well as 
its twaddling side. One may read beneath the chatter 
of tags and rags, of chignons and chiffons, a very 
real and a very painful humility. What, in our haste, 
we may take for vanity is just the reverse of it. This 
very anxiety as to appearance, this wearisome discus- 
sion of sumptuary details, betrays a want of self- 
confidence, of self-reliance, almost of self-respect, that 
at once grieves and depresses the outsider. They 
have no confidence in themselves, no belief in being 



DKESS. 



143 



able to please but by virtue of their coverings ; their 
dress must do it, not they. A German girl would 
expect a man to fall in love with her, if at all, when 
she had her best gown on ; the gown counts for so 
much more, to her humble mind, than the body and 
the soul inside it. The very words PtUz, geputzt, 
have an eminently displeasing ring of tawdriness 
about them, suggestive of incongruous frippery and 
finery. 

Dress ceases to be a pleasure when it becomes a 
source of strifes and envyings. The life of the ordi- 
nary German woman is, perhaps, above all others, 
calculated to develope that faculty for i the infinitely 
little ' which reduces existence to the dead level of 
Philistinism, and to encourage that mean personal 
estimate of things which Goethe inveighs against as 
the Gemeinheit des Lebens. In this spirit women, 
otherwise really amiable and estimable, will tear a 
toilette to tatters, pry, inspect, cavil, and condemn 
with a pertinacity worthy of a better cause through- 
out a whole afternoon. 

Men in Germany are rarely seen out of uniform ; 
when they are, it is greatly to their disadvantage. 
Yet such is the inconsistency of human nature that 
nothing affords a young officer so much delight as to 
elude the vigilance of his Vorgesetzten, and appear at 
a picnic or on an excursion en civil. In Germany, 
where everyone is a soldier first and a man afterwards 
(very much afterwards), the freedom granted to our 
plungers and friskers to promenade along Piccadilly 
or down the shady side of Pall Mall in garments elo- 
quent of Poole is unknown. The most audacious of 



144 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Moltke's heroes would scarcely dare to pass under the 
nose of his superior officer in non-military garments. 
Sooth to say, the travesty is not telling. The young 
man's legs, which looked straight in uniform, appear 
stiff now ; his waist, which is accustomed to the belted 
sword, seems wanting in balance and compression ; 
his well-squared shoulders appear clamouring for the 
epaulettes ; his hand gropes for the sword-hilt ; he can 
scarcely be expected to carry an umbrella (that 
weapon so dear to the heart of the Briton), and his 
swagger seems inappropriate shorn of sabre and 
stock. On the whole he has very much the appear- 
ance of a petit epicier cndimanche. The clothes, being 
only taken out at rare and distant intervals, usually 
belong to a past fashion, and being worn surrepti- 
tiously, with frequent glancings round corners lest 
generals should be lying in ambush, with three days' 
Zimmerarrest for the youthful irregularity of cos- 
tume, there is a want of ease and dignity disastrous 
to the effect of the young man's conquering charms. 
He was very handsome in his uniform. Why didn't 
he stay in it ? 

There was amongst my acquaintances a clever and 
agreeable person who had attained to the slow dig- 
nity of major, and was certainly old enough to have 
known better, yet upon every suburban or rustic 
occasion he persisted in getting himself into 1 civil ' 
clothes. Tradition asserted that he still wore his 
confirmation waistcoat. We need not descend to 
particulars ; ab tino discc omnes. It was his craze that 
every woman who gazed upon him thus was fated to 
love him. 'Let them languish,' he said superbly, 



DRESS. 



drawing on a pair of grass-green gloves after having 
wound immeasurable yards of checked cotton round 
his neck, as one sees in the sporting prints of the 
early part of the century : ■ Let them languish' (' Lass* 
sie schmachten '). In the garb of his profession he 
passed muster, and did not appear to consider himself 
specially fatal to the fair sex ; fortunately for us, cir- 
cumstances did not admit of his showing himself very 
frequently in this bewitching array. 

This strictness in the matter of uniform has its 
pleasant side in so far as the mere outer aspects of 
society are concerned. It makes the streets and parks 
gay, it renders the most ordinary ball-room almost 
dazzling, and gives an air of state and ceremony to 
the simplest festivities. The colour and the variety 
charm the eyes, and relieve the dreary monotony 
that inevitably results from a dismal congregation of 
blackcloth-wearers. 

Official etiquette demands that men who are not 
' military ' shall put themselves into evening clothes 
when they pay a visit of ceremony to a ' personage/ 
A deputation going up in the obligatory swallow-tail 
technically termed a Frack, at the hour of noontide, 
in white kid gloves, white ties, and black indispensa- 
bilities, makes a ghastly appearance. Yet how much 
more decent, and how r far less disastrous, even this 
than the ' dress ' (so-called) of English dowagers on 
* drawing-room ' days ! 

The German gentleman indulges, like his woman- 
kind, in the morning gaberdine, and appears wrapped 
in its voluminous folds, with dreadful worsted-worked 
slippers on his feet, until business or pleasure shall 

L 



146 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



call him from the bosom of his family. But as a man 
is more simply dressed than a woman, and cannot 
wear a night-cap, one may, if liberally disposed, 
take it for granted that he is only incomplete as to 
his outer garments, and try to accept the Schlafrock 
as a lounging coat ; indeed, the Joppe which Young 
Germany affects for morning wear corresponds to the 
shooting-coat of home life. 

Austrian gentlemen are, as a rule, irreproachable 
in their ' get-up,' which will at first suggest to you that 
they are Englishmen of the best type. Their garments 
are confessedly cut rather after the British than the 
Gallic model, and their behaviour, like their apparel, 
' is not too strait or point-device/ as Lord Bacon says, 
' but free for exercise or motion/ To be mistaken for 
an Englishman used to be (perhaps it is so still) rather 
a compliment than otherwise in Austrian ears ; the 
Viennese ' swell ' inclined to afficher his Anglomania, 
and was flattered by his successes in that line. There 
was a time — not so very distant — when the same 
amiable weakness prevailed in the North. Not in 
matters of dress alone were English ladies and gen- 
tlemen copied and commended. Even the poor, old, 
despised British Constitution used to be held up to 
the admiration of Germany. But, alas ! i ces beaux 
jours sont passes ; 9 no more red rags are wanted ; we 
must hide our diminished heads and ' go delicately/ 
if we would avoid attracting notice or giving of- 
fence. 



AMUSEMENTS. 



H7 



CHAPTER VII. 

AMUSEMENTS. 

* The music in my heart I bore 
Long after it was heard no more. ' 

Wordsworth. 

Of amusements in Germany it may be said that 
the name is legion ; but as the division of the sexes, 
in both public and private diversions, is almost as 
strict as in a Ritualistic church, it might appear to 
the superficial observer that the young ladies and 
gentlemen must amuse themselves, as the old chroni- 
cler says, moult tristement. 

That this is not so, I have been assured most 
strenuously by many of my German friends, who 
loudly declare that a Kaffee, for instance, with men in 
it, would be an affaire manquee altogether. To these 
Eleusinian mysteries we will, after having first seen 
what entertainment outdoor life offers to the modest 
saunterer, presently return. No matter how humble 
the household, the domestic pocket seems always able 
to produce sufficient coin for the cakes and ale, the 
beer and skittles, of the moment. We have seen that 
there is nothing in a German home (the flat being 
flattest) to particularly engage the loving care of its 
inmates. If you have swept, you need not be guilty 
of the futile folly of garnishing your house also. You 



148 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



have no garden to cultivate, no greenhouse to potter 
round, no croquet-lawn to coddle, no window-flowers 
to encourage, no patent mower or beneficent hose to 
experimentalise with ; the names of the commonest 
plants are unknown to German ladies, to whom talk 
of lobelias and petunias, calceolarias and verbenas, 
would be but babbling. 

As a rule, the coffee-gardens of Germany are open 
to all comers. The accommodation is of the roughest 
— a few sandy walks, a group of trees, some straggling 
bushes, a plot of ragged grass, countless little round 
tables, benches, and chairs, a Kegelba/m, a Bierkaus, 
and a band. The music supplied is generally bear- 
able, sometimes excellent, and not unfrequently sans 
reproche. Between the pauses of the band you hear 
the rolling of the ball and the fall of skittles ; waiters 
rush wildly to and fro in answer to shouts of * Kell- 
ner ! ' or impatient strikings of spoons and knives on 
cups and glasses. Coffee, chocolate, sauere Milch, beer, 
bread, cheese, and effervescing drinks are generally to 
be had for a few modest pence. To such coffee- 
gardens German families flock during the summer 
afternoons. The Honoi'atioren do not despise their 
simple attractions. The Adonises of the garrison 
come up and pay their stiff military respects to the 
general's daughters ; the honest citizen sits in the sun 
and smiles satisfaction on the social scene. The 
charming young Fraulein, both of the bourgeoisie and 
% society/ titter amongst themselves as, huddled up 
together like a covey of doves, they talk of their 
admirers and admire each other's clothes, whilst the 
elder women ' tatt/ ' crochet,' or knit in placid en- 



AMUSEMENTS. 



149 



joyment of the hour. The Herf Papa puffs his cigar, 
drinks his Baierisches Bier, his Bock, or his Micmme y 
and is ready to engage in harmless converse with 
anyone willing to talk and let talk. If now and again 
a young man ventures amongst the ladies, he is re- 
ceived by the unmarried of the party with a fluttering 
timidity and a modest downcasting of the eyes (suffi- 
ciently flattering to the young man's vanity) that 
makes the brief dialogue about as troublesome, in- 
sipid, and discouraging as can well be imagined ; but 
let the enterprising youth beat his retreat, the tongue- 
tied damsels break forth into the most unvarnished 
personalities, allusions, Neckereien, with becks and nods 
and expressive glances that contrast singularly with 
their previously assumed demure demeanour. 

It is a known fact that German ladies are most 
abstemious ; the stronger sorts of wines scarcely ever 
appear even at dinner-parties, and when they are pro- 
duced ladies never partake of them. A dash of 
claret, that just colours the water, is the extent of 
their wine-drinking. A glass of champagne and 
water, or a nip of Bowie, are excesses not to be in- 
dulged in without little protesting shrieks and pretty 
apologetic shamefacedness. This does not, however, 
apply to Bavarian ladies, who accompany their hus- 
bands and brothers to the Biergarien, and call for and 
consume their Schoppen as manfully as could their 
husbands. 

Of that frugality which never deserts the true 
German, from his uprising to his downlying, at home 
and abroad, travelling or stationary, two amusing in- 
stances occur to me. One, that of a man owning 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



vast estates, the possessor of much actual, the heir to 
still more prospective, wealth, who, travelling (so his 
friends positively affirmed) from Stettin to Vienna, 
only bought an orange by way of refreshment en 
route. Hence he acquired the sobriquet of ' Pome- 
ranzen L — — ; ' indeed, amongst his intimates he was 
known by no other name. The other instance affords 
an example of that ant-like foresight which is in 
direct opposition to the code of those careless persons 
who recommend no thought for the morrow. It is so 
characteristic of acquisitiveness, prudence, and a fine 
feminine perseverance that I cannot resist giving it. 

A party of two ladies, a Mamsell, and two chil- 
dren, travelled from the interior of Germany to Eng- 
land. The ladies not being related, occupied separate 
bedrooms, the Mamsell and the children sleeping in 
a third apartment, the whole party using a common 
sitting-room. The journey was long, the children 
young, and the stages necessarily short. Everyone 
who has travelled in Germany knows that with each 
cup of coffee the waiter deposits at your side a little 
china shell, containing six or eight lumps of sugar. 
Now it so happened that none of the party took 
sugar ; and when at night the Mamsell went into her 
mistress's room to see if she could help her, the tri- 
umphant Abigail exhibited with the greatest glee an 
enormous bagfull of sugar, gleaned by some cunning 
sleight of hand from the little sugar-receptacles (they 
had partaken twice of coffee during the day's journey) 
under the very nose of the waiters. On the hotel 
bill, next morning, appeared the inevitable item of 
* Bougies/ for the four rooms occupied by the party. 



AMUSEMENTS. 



Some objection was made, but the waiter insisting, the 
bill was paid without reduction. ' Nein ! dies ist aber 
zu toll ! ' exclaimed the indignant waiting- woman, 
and forthwith swept the eight wax-candles into her 
capacious pocket. Remonstrances were in vain. ' Sie 
haben dafiir bezahlen miissen ! ' she replied sturdily, 
and disregarded all admonitions. What with repeated 
coffee-drinking by the way, three nights in hotels, and 
evening meals at which tea figured, Mamsell had 
become like a perambulatory grocer's shop ; she was 
all sugar and candles. 6 But what will you do with 
all this sugar and wax ? ' the lady said plaintively. 
1 1 shall be four months in England, and my relations 
will not expect me to provide lights ; and, besides, we 
none of us — neither the children, you, nor myself — take 
sugar, or we should not have this horrible collection.' 

'Das schadet nichts,' replied the imperturbable 
Mamsell. i Sugar and candles will keep.' ' Well,' I 
asked my friend, who told me the story with many 
pathetic comments, ' and what did she do with her 
groceries ? ' 

' Why — would you believe it ? — she took them tra- 
velling in trunks all over England with her, and when 
we returned to Germany, in order to elude the vigi- 
lance of the custom-house officers, she made two 
huge pockets like potato-sacks, into which she stowed 
her acquisitions. Not content with this, she pursued 
the same system on the homeward journey, so that at 
last I trembled to order a cup of coffee, dreaded en- 
tering an hotel, and blushed at the sight of a Kellner? 
1 And what eventually became of her spoils ? ' ' Why, 
that was the drollest part of all. She kept them until 



152 GERMAN HOME LIFE. 




Christmas ; then she tied them up in pound packets, 
and made presents of them all round her family, re- 
marking to me with the most complacent air, ' Wenn 
Einer eine Reise thut, so kann er was erzahlen ! ' 
Being once again on German ground, we will return 
to the amusements which await us there. 

It is no mean advantage that one enjoys in being 
able to hear, absolutely free of expense, any afternoon 
during the summer months, an irreproachable stringed 
or military band discoursing sweet music. Who that 
has sat, for instance, on the Briihl'sche Terrasse under 
the starlit heavens, and seen the moon shining on the 
rippling Elbe, and watched the fourfold reflected 
lights of the double bridges, throwing snaky tongues 
of flame into the rapid river, above which rise in 
ghost-like procession the distant shrouded mountains, 
and marked the gay groups passing to and fro to that 
admirable band of stringed instruments, but retains a 
grateful remembrance of the place and the hour? 
The large beauty of the scene, the mystic influence of 
firmament, mountain, and flood ; the human interest 
nearer at hand ; the historic memories ; the dry warm 
night, all bring enjoyments that seem harmonised by 
the strains that rise and fall, make the heart ache with 
yearning memories, or soothe the soul with sweet 
impersonal wonder and content. All around people 
are moving to and fro— beautiful Polish women clad 
in deep mourning for the woes of their crushed coun- 
try ; artists of all nations come to study the treasures 
and wonders of the galleries ; languid Englishmen 
who seem prepared to suffer all things ; young couples 
on their wedding tours ; belted warriors whose spurs 



AMUSEMENTS. 



153 



ring on the pavement, and whose hands are constant 
in salute ; Frenchwomen chattering gaily, and discus- 
sing, perhaps, the old vexed question i si un Allemand 
peut avoir de l'esprit ;' German belles, somewhat over- 
dressed, but adding by that means local colour to the 
scene ; Jews from Posen and Leipzig ; students with 
plaids over their shoulders ; professors, statesmen — all 
drawn abroad by the lovely night, by the soft waver- 
ing music, by the moving, living human stream that 
passes to and fro. You are not greedy of speech in 
that hour ; silence suits you best. Let Beethoven, 
and Strauss, and Schubert speak ; as for you, you will 
hold your peace and be thankful. 

Quite different is the impression created by the 
Volksgarten or the Neue Welt at Vienna. There 
nature has no part. The booth and the orchestra are 
but elegant cockneyisms ; the flaring gaslights, the 
overdressed women, many of them evidently lionnes 
of an advanced type, the ostentatious promenading 
to and fro of celebrities dans tons les genres, may 
amuse, but it can do nothing more for you. There is 
a flare of folly and a flavour of vice in the atmosphere 
that takes the sweetness out of the scene. You will 
not care to be silent here, or to go home softly under 
the shining stars, fearful lest a jarring or unsympa- 
thetic word brush something, you know not what, of 
sacred from your soul. Such places are, I suppose, 
much like the Vauxhall of our fathers, or the Cre- 
morne of later days. But they are exceptional in 
Germany, where for the most part a blameless so- 
briety of demeanour makes the public gardens of the 
towns the customary resort of families, fathers and 



154 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



sons, mothers and daughters, meeting there in friendly 
intercourse. 

This inborn love of music it is that draws Ger- 
mans together and fills their theatres, their concert- 
rooms, their public gardens. Every German man and 
woman is born with the musical instinct ; in many it 
grows to be a passion ; in the poorest German villages 
you will be certain to find an admirable quartett ; the 
schoolmaster, the miller, the sexton, and the shoe- 
maker will meet and play their Bach or Mendelssohn, 
Spohr or Haydn, with all the diligence and love of 
conscientious musicians. Boys and girls sing the 
touching melodies of the mountains and the woods, 
the wild, plaintive Volkslieder and Weisen, with mar- 
vellous precision. One hears the goatherd on the 
mountains, the Jager, and the Sennerin, all carolling 
at their work, and Jodel answering Jodel from height 
to height. Pious pilgrims passing across the lakes 
from shrine to shrine lift up their voices in song, and 
borne across the waters in the midst of a vast and 
solemn nature, such simple strains fall like gentle 
messages from another world upon the heart. The. 
soldier sings as he keels the regimental pot and pipe- 
clays his belt and breeches ; the laundress sings 
amongst her suds ; the smith chants a jolly stave in 
praise of the hammer and anvil. Chateaubriand 
speaks, in his ' Memoires d'Outre-Tombe,' of seeing, 
in the dusk of the evening, young workgirls, basket on 
arm, young workmen carrying the tools of their trades, 
passing into a hail. A noted page is given to them, 
and with one consent several hundred voices join in 
marvellous precision, sending up a grand chorus to 



AMUSEMENTS. 



155 



the rafters. Each one takes up his belongings and 
goes his sober way, leaving the clear-sighted old 
Diplomat to remark that the French ' sont bien loin 
de ce sentiment de l'harmonie, moyen puissant de 
civilisation, qui a introduit dans la chaumiere des 
paysans de l'Allemagne une education qui manque a 
nos hommes rustiques. Partout ou il y a un piano, il 
n'y a plus de grossierete' — (Berlin, 18 16.) 

He is probably not mistaken. A German may be 
rough and rude ; he may be a bear (as John may be 
a bull) ; but in him the elements of the ' tiger and the 
ape ' are entirely absent. The wildest German demo- 
crat will never lose a certain reverence for humanity ; 
and no German woman could by any possibility 
develope into the hideous tricoteitse of the Reign of 
Terror, or that yet more ghastly product the petroleusc 
of the Commune. The difference is not one of de- 
gree, but of kind. The bands of young journeymen 
artisans you meet in the summer twilight are singing ; 
the girl stands at the door, and ' Mein Lieb' ist auf 
der Wanderschaft ' floats from her lips ; gangs of 
little children in the warm May night, coming through 
the town gates out of the meadows beyond, with 
boxes full of cockchafers, chant in their shrill childish 
trebles, ' Maikafer, flieg ;' those students are about to 
give a favourite professor a Stdndchen ; that band of 
wandering minstrels are miners, as by the insignia 
embroidered on their coat-sleeves you may see, going 
to some great fair or Messe in the neighbouring 
State. 

Amongst the amusements of German life, that 
bore, the so-called i musical party,' is unknown. People 



156 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



who love music come together ; they play their trios 
or quartetts ; sing their duos and solos, madrigals 
and glees ; stop, take this or that passage over again ; 
discuss the composer's intention ; try it one way and 
another, enjoy it, and pass on to fresh enjoyments. 
There is no yawning audience bored to death in the 
background, longing to talk ; guilty, perhaps, of that 
indiscretion, to the fury or despair of the performer, 
and the mute misery of the hostess. There is no 
i showing off' and forced acclamations, no grimace, 
and no vanity in the German evening. These lovers 
of music meet together with the reverence and sim- 
plicity of primitive Christians reading the legacies of 
the Evangelists ; and having interpreted their beloved 
masters to the best of their abilities, go their quiet 
way rejoicing. Of the absurdity of gathering a crowd 
of unmusical people together, calling it a ' musical 
party,' and paying a professional person to bore the 
assembly, the sincere German mind is, happily, inca- 
pable. 

After these open-air concerts you have the theatre. 
With us the flare of the footlights always smacks 
somewhat of dissipation. To have been often to the 
theatre seems to savour of frivolity, perhaps even of 
extravagance. They manage these things better in 
Germany, where theatre-going enters as much into 
the daily existence of men and women as the meals 
they eat and the clothes they wear. The drama is 
regarded seriously ; the stage is not looked upon 
merely as a source of amusement ; it is treated as a 
potent means of education, moral as well as intellec- 
tual. Princes of the smaller States are princely in 



AMUSEMENTS. 



157 



their support of the drama : the Ministry for Public 
Instruction votes its yearly sum, and the Grand Duke 
adds his munificent contribution ; as Goethe says, 
German culture owes more to the liberality and 
generous encouragement of the little, despised, so- 
called i tin-pot ' State Governments than she is ever 
likely to owe to the more distant Imperial sympathies, 
of a united Fatherland. Had Dresden, Weimar, 
Hanover, Stuttgart, and Brunswick been only pro- 
vincial towns, surely results would have been far 
different from what they are. The Opera House and 
the Schauspiel-Haus at Berlin are Imperial property^ 
and are very heavily subsidised from the Civil List.. 
The office of Intendant is held by a gentleman of 
position, and everything is done to render these places 
of amusement agreeable to the beatc-monde. Of the 
sixteen unsubsidised theatres in Berlin, the best 
known are the Friedricli- Wilhclmstadt, where modern 
dramas, light operas, and burlesques are played ; the. 
Victoria, which corresponds to the Porte St. Mar- 
tin ; and KrolVs, a sort of Alhambra and Cremorne: 
combined. At Wallner's you have Posse mil Gesang, 
but as the jokes are for the most part mere local allu- 
sions, it offers no attractions to strangers. 

According to the terms of your abonnement you 
will be able to go more or less frequently to the: 
theatre. Generally a lady will arrange to have her 
fauteuil on the same night with, and in the imme- 
diate vicinity of, friends. Men are not allowed in the 
dress circle, nor women in the stalls, which are de- 
voted to the ubiquitous military. Officers obtaia 
their abonnement under specially favourable condi- 



i 5 8 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



tions, and are free to come and go without worry from 
box-keepers or seat-guardians. It is the correct thing 
for them to put in an appearance for an hour or so 
during the evening. If his Royal Highness be there, 
he is better pleased to see the parterre of his pleasure- 
house filled with gay uniforms. Should the play weary 
or the ballet bore him, he can look down with pride 
on his gallant little army, and think what fine fellows 
It is composed of. Next to the Royal box is the Frem- 
dcnloge, generally occupied by distinguished strangers 
passing through the town. The names and titles of 
its occupants will be duly chronicled in to-morrow's 
* Anzeige.' You are at liberty to sell your ticket of 
abonnement, should other engagements prevent your 
availing yourself of it. The agent will charge you 
a small commission for conducting the transaction. 
A lady goes to the theatre with her maid or a friend, 
and without any impropriety returns after the same 
simple fashion. The performances will begin at 6.30, 
or 7 at latest, and she will be at home again by 9 or 
sooner. In the theatre, as in the coffee-garden, there 
is strict division of the sexes. In larger towns, where 
the passing through of many travellers makes the 
local laws less stringent, it is not unusual to see men 
and women sitting together, but they are almost 
invariably strangers and pilgrims. Birds of passage 
enjoy a freedom in such particulars that the Ein- 
heimischen cannot boast ; and it is all these easy 
privileges, these rational, inexpensive, and early 
amusements, that make a residence in Germany so 
charming to English people, whose intelligence is 
perhaps in advance of their means ; who are ready to 



AMUSEMENTS. 



159 



forego the parade of life, if they may only taste some 
of its reasonable pleasures ; to whom men-servants 
and maid-servants and rent and taxes at home are 
ruinous items, and who are willing to take out in 
culture what they sacrifice in comfort. 

I wish that space allowed me to speak more at 
length of German actors and actresses. Of the 
former many are men of deep and sound knowledge, 
who love their profession, honour and are an honour 
to it. Actresses are not unfrequently women of 
recognised character and worth. It is no uncommon 
thing for a favourite actress to remain twenty, thirty, 
or forty years faithful to one stage. * Our Frau 
M tiller,' ' our good Mullerinn/ and similar terms of 
affectionate proprietorship sound pleasant in our ears ' 
when applied to these faithful, patient friends of the 
public. It is almost a matter of course, on going 
into a shop where you are well known, the day after 
any important piece has been played, that the shop- 
keeper will ask, 'Well, what did the gnddige Frau 
think of the Gretchen or the Clarchen of our good 
Meyer last night ? ' And i the smooth-faced, snub- 
nosed rogue' will soon let you know (without any 
pertness or undue familiarity, be it observed) that 
whosoever else may be ignorant, he knows his Faust, 
and his Egmont, and his Minna von Barnhelm down 
to the ground. Actresses of good character are 
invited to the better-class bourgeois tables, where 
they are honoured guests ; they mix freely with the 
unmarried daughters of the family, and are as sober 
in their attire and demeanour as the tamest of the 
respectabilities they frequent. 



i6o 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



The ' starring' system, so fatally prevalent in 
England, is unknown in Germany. When a great 
actor is announced to play als Gast, the regular 
staff of the theatre in which he will give a limited 
number of performances are perfectly willing to take 
whatever subordinate roles may be assigned to them. 
Everyone engaged is honestly anxious that the 
ensemble shall be as perfect as possible, and actors 
who are popularly supposed to be at least as vain as 
poets are irritable come down with a good grace 
and disappear pro tent, into small parts in the 
interests of their art, with a cheerfulness that does 
them credit. Before an actor, in Germany, can 
expect to be permanently engaged for any Hof- 
Theater, he must have learned to intone and speak 
correctly, and however small his part, he will be 
expected to study it as conscientiously and to know 
it as thoroughly as if it were the most impor- 
tant in the piece. Neither has the actor a very easy 
life. ' Long runs ' are impossible where there is 
only a limited public ; on those nights in the week 
which are devoted to tragedy, drama, and comedy the 
actor will have to appear in different parts. The 
repertoire is a large one, the pieces are changed 
every day, and singers as well as actors are inces- 
santly engaged in studying new roles. Subscribers 
will not pay to see the same piece over and over 
again. Thus the financial prosperity of a Hof-Theater 
depends very much on the variety of its programme. 

The writer was astonished, on returning to London 
after several years' residence in Germany, to see the 
raw and ragged performances which were hailed in 



AMUSEMENTS. 



161 



our most popular London theatres with almost 
childish delight. One favourite actor seemed suf- 
ficient to atone for the most glaring deficiencies on 
the part of the subordinate characters ; and for a 
Sensational drama,' which would have been hissed 
off the boards of a German Hof-Theater, the British 
public were taking seats a month beforehand, and 
telegraphing for places from the provinces. 

We, who are not a musical people, though we are 
rapidly acquiring the taste, and, as is the manner 
of all neophytes, give ourselves monstrous airs of 
connoisseurship, can scarcely understand how the 

• music of the future ' should command the enormous 
popularity it undoubtedly enjoys in Germany. With 
us the select few go to hear ' Lohengrin ' or the 

• Tannhauser ; ' and we come away, if we would only 
be candid enough to say so, simply overwhelmed and 
perplexed. But let a Wagner night be advertised in 
a German theatre ; the house will be crowded to the 
roof, the representation will have to be repeated two, 
three, four, half-a-dozen times, and every night there 
will be the same struggle for seats. Incredible as 
it seems, Wagner, in the very broadest sense of 
popularity, is popular ; curiosity has had time to die 
the death long ago, if it were a mere matter of 
curiosity ; his name on the play-bill is sufficient to 
fill the house, and to fill it from all grades and classes. 

But, nevertheless, light opera is greatly in vogue, 
and it is pleasant to see the absence of all grimace 
and affectation in the great mitsici who listen with 
pleasure to Auber, Boieldieu, Offenbach, and others 
w T hereof the name is legion. What the caricature is 

M 



l62 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



to the cartoon, such is the comic opera to the classic. 
Not high art, perhaps, but none the less enjoyable 
on that account ; provocative of honest, innocent 
mirth, and gay, guileless laughter. There are dozens 
of light operas familiar to the German public which 
are quite unknown in England. ' I only play classical 
music/ says the young English lady of whom you 
venture to ask a gay tune. And there is an accent 
of marked disgust at your unutterable shallowness 
on the severe adjective. Poor thing ! she loses a 
great deal of pleasure — like many other pretentious 
and exclusive people. 

Nothing brings home to us more vividly the 
pleasant simplicity of German life than the Sommer- 
Theater. In towns where there is no Court, and not 
a sufficiently large public to make a permanent theatre 
a paying speculation, a band of strolling players 
is welcomed with enthusiasm. Let me recall my first 
experience of a German Sommer-Theater. 

It was in a Northern town — a garrison town, 
but one of the deadliest-liveliest of places that a 
morbid imagination could picture. Presently the 
Summer Theatre was announced in the ' Anzeige.' 
Forthwith we all ran about disseminating and 
cackling over the glad tidings. The performance 
took place on a temporary stage erected in the inn 
garden. We all sat on benches, not so much as a 
tarpaulin to cover us, and the front seats were 
occupied by all the Honoratioren of the place. 
Colonels' and majors' and captains' wives shone 
resplendent in their best gowns, and all the military 
men were in attendance. Several influential families 



AMUSEMENTS. 



163 



drove in from the country, and the conversation 
between the acts was of the most animated descrip- 
tion. The primitive arrangements carried one back 
to the days of the Elizabethan drama ; or, by a 
slightly wider stretch of the imagination, to the 
masques and frolics of the Versailles bosquets. No 
one could be permitted to put up a parasol, as it 
would have obstructed the general view, and I have 
a lively remembrance of a blazing western July sun 
scorching my ears and neck into cinders. The 
performance, if my memory serves me, was very 
creditable. Even in towns where there is a per- 
manent theatre, these strolling troupes are allowed 
to pitch their tents. They require special permission, 
however, to do so ; not only from the town authori- 
ties, but also from the Intendant y whose legitimate 
receipts are not to be interfered with by a humble 
rival ; so that the visits of these strolling players are 
generally timed to take place whilst the Hof -Theater 
is being painted and redecorated, and the Court 
actors are away for their summer holiday. So great 
is the jealousy of rival entertainments that not even 
a circus-booth is allowed to be erected during the 
fair-time without special permission, lest it should 
interfere with the receipts of the legitimate drama. 

After the theatre the ball. The country that 
invented the waltz understands the ball to perfection. 
No crushing and crowding into small carpeted rooms, 
inadequately furnished with waxed dancing-druggets ; 
no trampling and tearing, no buffeting and ricochet- 
ting, no sitting on stairs or standing at drawing-room 
doors with your train on the next landing-place. 

M 2 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Firstly, no one gives a ball in Germany unless he 
have a ball-room to offer his guests. Nevertheless, 
a vast amount of picnic balls, subscription balls, and 
officers' balls are given at very moderate expense,, 
and to the unlimited satisfaction of everyone con- 
cerned. A picnic ball is managed as follows : — Some^ 
happy householder has a ball-room, but does not feel 
justified in going to the expense of a large entertain- 
ment. He is asked to lend his room. One or other 
of the bachelors of society draws out a list of 
families to be invited ; it is sent round, and, if yoa 
accept, the stewards forward you in a day or two a 
ticket, with a list of the things you are to contribute 
as, for instance, 6 two fowls, three pounds of coffee, 
an Eisto7'te, and a Sandkuchen! These you send in 
on the appointed day ; the host probably contributes 
the lights, and perhaps the music ; or, if the ball be 
given in an hotel, the landlord supplies lights and 
service for a moderate amount ; the sum is divided 
amongst the subscribers, and the result is a maximum 
of pleasure at a minimum of expense. 

The Court — where there is one — the Ministers, the 
corps diplomatique, the military, civil servants, mer- 
chants and shopkeepers, all give their own balls, at 
which, as a rule, only members of their own corpora- 
tions or particular society appear. Of course 
guests are occasionally invited, but their presence is. 
exceptional and not always productive of good- 
fellowship. 

At all balls, whether Court, private, or subscription,, 
the office of conducting the dances is entrusted to a 
Vortanzer. He will generally be chosen from 



AMUSEMENTS. 



165 



amongst the most accomplished and agreeable of his 
:set — ' ein flotter Kerl,' as the old fellows will call him, 
with a chuckling admiration, half pride, half envy. 
He will arrange the sequence of the dances, give 
the band the signal to commence and that to leave 
off ; he leads the dances, calling out ' Two turns 
round the room, six couples to follow.' By these 
means perfect order is preserved ; ladies do not get 
overheated ; there is no destruction of the ' pro- 
perties,' and your dress will be as immaculate at 
the end of the evening as when you entered the 
room. The non-dancing guests stand round, in 
an outer circle, looking at the gyrations of the 
younger folk ; and division after division of dancers, 
the number regulated by the size of the room, follows 
in turn the lead of the Vortanzer> until everyone has 
had the pleasure of flying in unimpeded progress 
quite as often as is good for him over the polished 
parquet. The dance over, instantaneous division of 
the sexes ; the young man wheels right about face, 
clicks his heels together, drops his head so that his 
bump of self-esteem may be inspected without 
difficulty, and immediately withdraws. The cotillon, 
only struggling into popularity here, is the crowning 
point of the evening's pleasure, and invariably finishes 
the ball. It is the Gefiihlstanz. You not only spend 
a long (and it is presumed agreeable) time with the 
partner of your choice, but you are sought out for 
*extra tours, and in your turn have to seek, after a 
fashion that causes much amusement and many 
surmises as to the elective affinities of the hemi- 
spheres wandering in space. 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Picnics are a favourite diversion in Germany. 
They are not what we understand by the term. The 
young ladies are in their best bibs and tuckers, 
the young men feeling fish-out-of-waterish in plain 
clothes, the old people toiling and panting after the 
young ones ; everyone rather affected, rather afraid 
it will rain, rather sorry their shoes are so tight. A 
little niggling, demure walk through a weedy wood ; 
much genteel giggling, exclamations of terror at 
rustic horrors, gnats, and a general sense of having 
your best clothes on, with salad and pancakes in a 
tumble-down inn garden, form the rural delights of 
the day. Division of the sexes is apparently not 
quite so strict as usual, but none of the lambs are 
allowed to stray ; the flock is kept well together, a 
vigilant old sheepdog or two always on the look-out. 
I think my readers must confess that even the limited 
list of amusements which I have here been able to 
give proves that our cousins German, if not a gay, 
are at least a gregarious people. 

There is no space to describe the sleighing parties, 
with their hardly-to-be-hinted-at privilege of a kiss 
from the lady of your choice, and we must pass on to 
the best-beloved and best-abused of all German 
amusements, the Kaffce-Gesellschaft. Strictest division 
of the sexes. Mystery, hated of men, adored by 
women. The Kaffee is an afternoon entertainment, 
generally commencing about four o'clock. Strong 
coffee, chocolate flavoured with vanilla and beaten up 
with eggs and cream : every imaginable kind of 
Gebdck (i.e. cakes of a richness to make itself 
remembered), Sandtorte, and finally Eistorte, are the 



AMUSEMENTS. 



luxuries upon which you may regale yourself. Yet 
still others are provided. It is a perfect orgie of 
scandal. At every word a reputation dies. A flutter 
of animation runs through the company as the best- 
informed lady produces bit by bit her sensational 
details. Ahs, and ohs, and head-waggings, and 
shoulder-shruggings, relieve the feelings of the fair 
censors, while they ' murder characters to kill time/ 

' Nor do they tntst their tongues alone, 
But speak a language of their own ; 
Can read a Nod, a Shrtig, a Look, 
Far better than a printed book ; 
Convey a libel in a frown, 
And wink a reputation dozun; 
Or by the tossing of a fan 
Describe the Lady and the Man. ' 

I often wished, assisting at such festivities, that the 
Dean of St. Patrick's verses might have been 'writ 
large, to be understanded of the company, above the 
doors of these censorious saloons. 

To sit in circles and slander ; to snatch scandal 
from your servants, and listen to libels of your 
Friseuseinn ; to collect calumnies and grasp greedily 
at mean gossip ; to whisper, to insinuate, to malign, 
to backbite, to bear false witness, and to revel in 
envies and jealousies and all uncharitableness, seem 
too often to be the chartered privileges of the 
votaresses who celebrate these rites. Had men been 
present, for very shame the chattering tongues must 
have spared many a reputation now torn to tatters ; 
but men abominate the very name of a Kaffee, and 
do not hesitate to declare roundly that they consider 
a Kaffee-Gesellschaft an ' immoral institution/ Many 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



gentle ladies have deplored to me the low, personal 
tone and the vulgar gossip they have to endure in 
these (so-called) 'ladies parties,' and heartily depre- 
cated the institution from which they had not the 
courage entirely to detach themselves. 

Only an elderly lady, a ' grande dame de par le 
monde,' whose age places her beyond scandal, and 
whose rank elevates her above criticism, can venture 
to invite men to a Kaffee-GesellschafL Of such 
pleasant afternoons I retain a lively remembrance. 
Our hostess, an ex-Austrian ambassadress, received 
us with her secretary and dame de compagnie in 
attendance. Pretty young women with their husbands, 
old devoted friends, gallant generals en retraite, 
diplomates of the snuff-box and gold-button period, 
a stately dowager or two, a pleasant, comely old 
maid or so, any young officer or civilian who had 
claims to distinction, made up our dear old friend's 
' afternoons.' People felt honoured by her invitation ; 
and with all the decent order, and even modest state, 
of her entourage, she was so lively, so simple, so 
utterly herself, that these little gatherings, merry and 
unrestrained as they were, seemed to recall the time 
when the true grand ton was struck in the tone of 
simplicity, and to tell us something of the charm, the 
gentle wit, and the graceful courtesies of a day long 
since gone by. 



WOMEN. 169 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WOMEN. 

' And Nature swears the lovely dears 
Her noblest work she classes, O ! 
Her prentice han' she tried on man, 
And then she made the lasses, O ! ' 

Bums. 

< Ehret die Frauen/ says Schiller in one of his best- 
known poems : ' sie flechten und weben himmlische 
Rosen ins irdische Leben ' 

(' Honour to women ! To them it is given 
To garland the earth with the roses of heaven ' ) ; 

and in a key of fervent exhortation he proceeds to 
contrast in changing metre, and terms certainly not 
advantageous to the ' superior/ the characteristics of 
the two sexes. 

By the ' superior ' we of course mean the stronger 
sex : the style esclave still obtains in Germany. No 
John S. Mill has as yet arisen with Quixotic enthu- 
siasm on the social horizon of Teutonia, nor has, so 
far, the voice of the emancipated been heard in the 
Fatherland. 

It has somewhere been rashly asserted by some 
one that every woman not born an Englishwoman, 
could she have had a choice in the matter, would 



170 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



have chosen to be so born. No greater error could 
be made as regards the German woman. She, taking 
her all round, is absolutely contented with her lot, 
and supremely disregardful of the estate of other 
women. The day of small things not only suffices; 
for her, but is to her as a crown of glory ; she de- 
spises the frivolity of the French, the freedom of the 
English, the fearless strides and absolute indepen- 
dence of the American woman. Do not believe that 
you will be able to sit long in the seat of the scorn- 
ful: you will have to come down and go out, for 
towering high above you, on her pedestal of home- 
baked virtues, and looking down upon your orna- 
mentalness and uselessness with the fear and dislike 
virtue assumes in gazing upon vice, stands the tradi- 
tional Hausfrau. That she should have anything to 
learn of her neighbours (outside the Fatherland) is 
impossible : there is only one country in the world, 
and that is Germany ; there is only one woman, and 
that is the German woman. In the face of such 
convictions as these it would be daring to hint at 
the state of mind that has been characterised as. 
a mean satisfaction with a mean position. The 
' coming ' woman, as yet, casts no shadow across the 
dead level of German home life. The ' platform 
woman ' and the 1 medical woman ' are still only 
known by evil report ; beings that cause the virtuous 
matron to draw her imaginary skirts shudderingly 
around her ample form, and to pass by, with mentally 
averted eyes, on the other side. 

When, in Germany, the (so-called) chivalry of the 
Middle Ages fell dead, and the romantic period came 



WOMEN. 



171 



to a timely end, Woman seems to have disappeared 
into indefinite drudgery, whence she only emerges to 
bewilder us by her paradoxical position during the 
Goethe-Schiller period. The intellectual resurrection 
of the Fatherland, the age of philosophy and letters, 
the Weimar-Athens epoch, when a grand spiritual 
revolution shook old prejudices and false tastes to 
their rotten foundations, presents a picture full of 
intense interest to the student of human nature. 
After years of silence and obscurity Woman comes 
again to the front ; yet, truth obliges us to confess, 
in no very elevated guise. Artificiality was banished 
from Society ; Nature now was to have her rights ; 
paint and powder, ruffles and talons rouges, were 
deposed ; and in the place of French audacity, wit, 
and sprightliness we have classic robes, fillet-bound 
heads, melancholy, moonshine, and sentiment. All 
social conventionalities are upset and defied. Men 
and women change partners as in a quadrille ; a 
continual chassez-croisez confuses society. ' There 
is hardly a woman in Weimar/ writes Schiller to 
Korner, ' but has a liaison ; they are all coquettes. 
One may easily fall in with an affair of the heart, 
though it will not last any time/ Extravagant wor- 
ship of the purely intellectual, on the one hand, and 
a throwing off with undisguised contempt the old 
traditional restraints of life on the other, mark the 
most brilliant period of German history. A glorifi- 
cation of personal freedom is the gospel of the new 
school, whereof the highest doctrine seems to be that 
every man shall do what is good in his own eyes, 
since his appetites, passions, and desires are sacred 



172 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



emanations from a Superior Being, implanted in his 
breast only to be gratified. Selfish sentimentality, 
hysteric weepings over the dulness and indifference 
of mankind, rhapsody, melting of sympathetic souls, 
romantic meetings, absence of all firm purpose or 
high-strung resolve, elective affinities, bathos and 
suicide, mark the epoch of the rehabilitation of 
Woman in Germany. 

As we gaze round on the Weimar group we are 
puzzled. We see Jean Paul with his Titanide, Char- 
lotte von Kalb, a big, flighty, foolish woman, tumb- 
ling, morally and physically, any way (the lawful 
husband philosophically indifferent to the eccentri- 
cities of his half-mad, slatternly spouse), disputing 
the possession of Richter's Platonic soul with the 
sentimental Emilia von Berlepsch, also 'a married 
lady ; ' and in the dim background languishes, some- 
what obscurely, a Madame de Kriidener (not the 
author of * Valerie/ be it observed), and yet another 
sympathetic being, nameless to posterity. It is true 
the 'only one' (der Einzige) is a little shocked by 
the fall from the empyrean of one ' dear angel,' and 
a little trammelled by the exactions of the other, but 
his purer spirit at length finds the repose it seeks in 
the haven of matrimony. We see the great Goethe, 
after endless 1 love affairs,' not too great to form a 
liaison with Frau von Stein (Herr von Stein quite 
agreeable to the arrangement), of whom it must be 
said that she turned out a considerable thorn in the 
majestic poet's flesh. A sentimental and bellettristic 
correspondence flourishes during a decade, long be- 
fore the end of which we read between the lines 



WOMEN. ') 173 

that Goethe is heartily sick of his exacting charmer. 
They quarrel — as all lovers in all times have done, 
and will do — and the disputes are generally made 
up by presents of sausages, fruit, or cakes from the 
high-tempered lady. Goethe goes after strange god- 
desses ; and the rupture is complete when he ' de- 
clines on the lower range of feeling ' of a Christiana 
Vulpius. We see the calm Schiller puzzled as to 
which he ought to love best, his wife or her sister 
Charlotte von Lengefeld ; and an uncomfortable sug- 
gestion presents itself to the mind that he may have 
married the wrong lady, We are almost tempted to 
think that the correct Korner had a tendre for his 
sister-in-law, the artist, Dorothea Stock, whose lover, 
Huber, ran away with another man's wife, said man 
uttering pious aspirations for the happiness of the 
interesting couple, and imploring Heaven to bless 
their union. We see Werner, the author of 4 Die 
Weihe der Kraft ' (' Consecration of Strength '), him- 
self a signal example of mental and moral weakness, 
divorcing two wives, and before he is thirty years 
of age looking out for a third. He finds the lady, 
and divorces her also after eight weeks of matri- 
mony. Plainly he had no vocation for the holy 
estate. ' For a Christian man to leave three widows 
behind him/ says Mr. Carlyle, * certainly wears a 
peculiar aspect/ We see Bettina von Arnim run- 
ning about the country in adventurous guise, whilst 
all the ladies weep tears of envy and Riihrung 
over the exquisite Naivetcit of that apocryphal 
volume known as ' Goethe's Correspondence with a 
Child/ Friedrich Schlegel does not hesitate to rob 



174 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



a friend (to whom he was under the deepest obliga- 
tions) of his wife, and to write an infamous novel 
in glorification of the deed. We see young Jeru- 
salem dying of Wertherism ; Von Kleist shooting him- 
self, with his ' friend ' Sophia Vogel, ' am heiligen 
See/ near Potsdam ; and Charlotte Stieglitz trying 
to rouse her husband, a confirmed hypochondriac, by 
stabbing herself to the heart before his eyes with a 
dagger. But of unedifying particulars enough to prove 
that such extravagances at the period to which we 
refer were not isolated exceptions, but rather the rule 
of the day. Not the least part of the strange picture 
lies in the fact that the exceptional women ('they 
are all coquettes/ says Schiller) of blameless lives 
and decent conduct mix freely with their more elastic 
sisters, and seem definitively, and of conviction, to 
have adopted the axiom that all lapses from virtue 
are to be regarded with the strictest toleration. 

Amidst all these ecstasies and fervours, simmerings 
and sighings, we turn with a feeling of relief to the 
wholesome typical figure of Werther's Charlotte, and 
admire the exquisite calmness with which she, having 
seen 

* His body borne before her on a shutter, 
Like a well-conducted person 
Went on cutting bread-and-butter. ' 

She, after all, though the others be the representative 
men and women of an epoch, is the typical German 
woman ; true through all time ; and she has gone on 
cutting bread-and-butter ever since. In fact, for de- 
cent German women there seems, by universal con- 
sent, to be no other career ; and when we consider 
that the world is full of exorbitant persons, who cla- 



WOMEN. 



175 



mour three times a day for food, let us give all honour 
to the bread-and-butter cutters of life. 

But in the rebound from artificiality the then 
polite world fell into such extremes of genteel sensi- 
bility that no one dared to be truly natural. The 
ambition to shine, if not by talents, then by singu- 
larity ; if not by beauty, then by extravagance of 
opinion ; if not by rank, then by recklessness — de- 
stroyed the very simplicity that the enthusiasts had 
originally taken for their text, and ' the modesty of 
nature,' overstepped, became unnatural. 

Nevertheless, we must remember that this is the 
period to which every German man and woman turns 
with pride and pleasure ; it is the moment of time 
when Woman emerges from the obscurity and drud- 
gery of the dark ages, and becomes a personage and 
a power. The lives at which we have briefly glanced 
are not the lives of obscure, little-regarded persons ; 
they are those of the representative men and women 
of the times, who gave the tone to society and to 
literature ; not hidden shamefacedly under depre- 
catory bushels, but set up high on the altars of en- 
thusiasm and hero-worship. These men are their 
greatest ; these women their highest and brightest ; 
these philosophies and poesies and moralities their 
supremest, sublimest, best. It is their ne plus ultra of 
all that culture and development can produce — like 
the age of Pericles, an age to be cited by admiring 
worlds for all after times, with proud pointings of the 
finger to the unapproachable group and triumphant 
upward glances of unspeakable adoration. 

This is what German men and women get out of 
it. To outsiders this affectation of Nature is the most 



176 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



offensive form of the artificial. The French marquise, 
chattering shallow philosophies, could at least amuse 
you by her wit, if you refused to be bewildered by 
her beauty ; but these votaresses of i Nature ' pose, 
parade, and perorate with an almost indecent effron- 
tery, whilst they bore you to death with their dull 
loves and high-flown correspondence. The talk is so 
tall, the outcome so small ; the sentimentality is so 
heavy, flat, stale, and unprofitable, that you turn from 
these femmes incomprises, these tender, transparent 
souls, and feel in your heart that perhaps worse things 
than epigrammatic immoralities, paint, and patches 
have happened to you. 

The ideal woman of Germany is still much what 
Schiller painted her ; she poses in passionless serenity 
(as you may see on the title-pages of the poetry- 
books), surrounded by sister souls and crowned with 
stars. She is a soft, sentimental creature, all sensi- 
bility and adjectives, weaving i heavenly roses' into 
this earthly life ; sighing softly to the stars, wandering 
in moonlight, culling forget-me-nots and pansies, and 
enwreathing her blonde brows with the flowers of 
the feelings ; melancholy, sympathetic, schw tinner isch ; 
blue-eyed and pensive ; swimming, somewhat vaguely, 
in vast seas of sentiment, not far from dangerous gulfs 
of bathos. The Egeria of some favoured Numa, the 
' heavenly friend' of a semi-Platonic lover ; vaporous, 
floating somewhere, like Mahomet's coffin, between 
heaven and earth, ready to dissolve at the touch of 
this gross work-a-day world, and so pass away in a 
state of elemental purity to more sympathetic regions. 

There is no figure more poetic than that of the 



WOMEN. 



177 



ideal German woman ; there is no actuality more pro- 
saic than the flesh and blood reality, *as she lives and 
moves and has her being. The ideal woman is always 
unmarried ; the real woman is married. If marriage 
be the prose of life, German marriage is of prose 
the prosiest. ' Mit dem Giirtel, mit dem Schleier,' says 
Schiller, with the gentle cynicism of his cold, calm 
nature, i reisst der schone Wahn entzwei ! ' With the 
loosened cestus and the lost veil the sweet madness 
is also lost. He knew best. The finding is not one 
to gratify the weaker sex generally, but no German 
woman has been found to resent the poet's utterance. 
They thenceforth, if goddesses at all, are household 
goddesses ; their pedestal, if pedestal be still possible, 
is set upon the great Teutonic tripod — the home- 
baked, the home-brewed, the home-spun. Marthas 
henceforward, cumbered about with too much serving 
(consider only those clamourings for food at which we 
have already glanced) to have time for aught else. 

It seems to be an accepted dogma that a man is a 
man whether he be Bachelor or Benedick ; whereas a 
woman may only be properly so called when she has 
fulfilled her destiny as wife and mother. Short of 
that she is an incomplete unit ; and, whatever other 
' mission ' she may have fulfilled, that which Nature 
originally intended for her remains unaccomplished. 
Under the heading of 1 Marriage,' Woman in her 
fullest development shall be dealt with ; for the pre- 
sent we can only contemplate her as she walks 'in 
maiden meditation fancy free/ 

The girl is, however, mother to the woman ; and 
if, in the majority of cases, the woman be only the 

N 



178 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



greater child, a glance backwards from effect to cause 
will go far towards explaining this feminine pheno- 
menon. We have seen what the ideal German 
woman is, and the young lady tries to copy her. 
She piques herself upon her * sensibility,' and is proud 
of her Empfindlichkeity a quality which often has the 
root quite as much in ' tetchiness ' and temper as in 
tenderness. She is easily offended, easily discouraged, 
easily thrown off her balance. The feminine virtues 
of patience and submission become, by exaggeration, 
vices of helplessness and indecision ; she is kept in a 
state of such tutelage and irresponsibility as can 
scarcely fail to make her troublesome at a crisis and 
useless in an emergency. Clinging and clamouring 
have come to be looked upon as somewhat obstruc- 
tive attributes, and the parasitical virtues are, gene- 
rally, rather at a discount amongst us ; but this is not 
so in Germany, where negative acquiescence ranks 
higher in women than positive affirmation, where their 
poets paint them helpless and their husbands, like 
them, subjugated. 

When the writer of these pages first went to 
Germany, it was with the expectation of finding in 
every tenth woman an uncrowned Corinna, and in 
every twentieth a silent Sappho — silent only in the 
sense, be it observed, of the poet's ' mute, inglorious 
Milton.' Even at the Capitol Corinnas were not ; 
and Sappho was conspicuously absent from Lesbos 
* without leave.' 

Now, in Germany learning is the characteristic 
honour of the nation ; and it is the proud boast, and 
the just one too, of German women, that they alone, 
of all the modern feminities of the earth, are abso- 



WOMEN, 



179 



lutelywell educated. In ' ladies' schools' it is not, as 
a rule, the mistresses who teach ; they confine them- 
selves to attending to the ' creature comforts ' of 
their pupils, and superintending the lower branches 
of education, needlework, &c. Competent masters 
are engaged to instruct their pupils in history, litera- 
ture, modern languages, &c. The same professors 
that lecture to their brothers and cousins within the 
university halls and college class-rooms come down 
from those greater altitudes to teach the children 
and young girls in their day-schools. 1 They are 

1 The Berlin correspondent of the Daily JVezas disputes this state- 
ment. Whilst recognising and admitting the justice of the foregoing 
picture on the whole he says : * The most ambitious and comprehensive 
attempt ever made in Berlin to open the higher studies to women owes 
its origin and success to two English ladies — to the initiative, the intel- 
ligence, the fidelity, the energy, of Miss Archer and the patronage and 
support of her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess. I refer to the 
Victoria Lyceum. This institute, organised and directed by Miss 
Archer, provides, at moderate rates, literary and scientific lectures for 
ladies. The subjects are such as the history of art, English literature, 
Italian poetry, astronomy, botany, &c. This would seem to be an 
enterprise in which every German father or husband would be imme- 
diately interested. The fact is, however, that nearly all the leading 
professors have seemed to regard with disfavour, as a lowering of their 
professional standing, the appearing before women to lecture, and Miss 
Archer has been obliged to fill up her list with men of merit indeed, 
but men whose necessities forbade them to make any distinction of sex 
in the lecture room. The German philosophy does not forbid the 
education of women, but it represses with brutal rigour any demonstra- 
tion of the so-called emancipated. ' 

This may be true of the Berlin professors, but not of those else- 
where. The offence probably lies in the endeavour to give the higher 
education of women an official, recognised character, 1 a local habita- 
tion and a name,' as it were; and any organised attempt in that 
direction would probably meet with the same opposition in other 
towns. 'An ' ' emancipated woman " is a woman who reads Greek 
and Schopenhauer,' says the Daily Neivs correspondent. 

N 2 



1 8a 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



taught regularly, systematically, patiently, lovingly.. 
How much the young ladies profit by such teachings, 
it is not for us to say, but we may venture to affirm 
that a German girl must be dull indeed who is not 
well-read. Everything is taught, and everything is- 
taught well. But, after all, a building is not made 
of brick only, nor a ship of mere wood ; and there 
are a score of diverse influences and social conditions 
working on the outer and inner systems of female 
education in Germany quite beyond the reach of any 
professors however eminent, or any pedagogues how- 
ever profound. 

Besides education, there is such a thing as self- 
education. A woman may be very well up to the 
general mark — nay, high above it in all matters of 
ordinary education — yet, if she strive not to teach 
herself somewhat of those things that make life 
lovely, she will learn before long that all her know- 
ledge is but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, 
and that the wisdom of her professors has been spent 
on her in vain. In the moral and social education of 
a German girl, even in her physical education, pre- 
cisely the contrary doctrine prevails. She is taught 
that to be womanly she must be helpless, to be femi- 
nine she must be feeble, to endear herself she must 
be dependent, to charm she must cling. She is not 
brought up to be, she does not desire to be, the com- 
panion, the comrade, the equal, in ' all that not hurts 
distinctive womanhood/ of the men around her. She 
is thrown back upon herself and other women for 
society and amusement ; a life that revolves in a 
narrow, circumscribed round of inanities is considered 



WOMEN. 



181 



good enough for her. To be herself is to be nothing 
— less, worse, than nothing. To be as like everybody 
else as she can ; to copy her friends' clothes, phraseo- 
logy, and manners ; to worship the platitude of pre- 
cedent, to conform to the dead level that custom has 
prescribed, to keep carefully to the sheepwalk, to 
applaud in concert and condemn in chorus, is the 
only behaviour that can be tolerated. If she does 
these things she fulfils all the law and the prophets, 
and it shall be well with her ; but if she do them not 
she will be viewed askance by her sisters, eyed with 
dislike and suspicion ; it will be whispered that she 
is a Blaustrumpf or a Freigeist\ it will be pro- 
claimed that she is a Pietistinn or an emanzipirtes 
Frauenzimmer ; she will be stigmatised as iiber- 
spannt y revolutionary, dangerous, objectionable. 

Allowances are made by these gentle ladies for 
the eccentricities of French, English, and American 
women, on account of the unfortunate accident of 
their birth ; but they are inexorable towards one ot 
their own circle who would dare to assert any origi- 
nality of character or independence of action. Woe 
would certainly betide the folly of that virgin who 
-would venture to shake off the ' wounding cords that 
bind and strain/ and make an existence for herself 
independent of the cackling of the Kaffeen and the 
weariness of infinite boredom broad-based upon ever- 
lasting babble. Visions of charming German women 
I have known rise up and look at me with blue 
pathetic eyes. They are the exceptional women, the 
women least loved by their fellows— disturbing, un- 
comfortable souls, bringing constraint and gene in 



182 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



their train. The utterances of such women, though 
modest enough, are out of key with the Philistine 
chorus (shall we say the vox Dei?) in the back- 
ground. And, after all, it is by these, not by the 
vague, exalted, heroic figures, that the sorry action 
of the play is helped forward and the platform 
chiefly occupied. They have one bugbear and one 
object of idolatry, these monotonous ladies — a fetish 
which they worship under the name of mode ; a 
monster between public opinion and Mrs. Grundy. 
To say that a thing ' is not mode here ' is to condemn 
it as if by all the laws of Media and Persia. It is 
not her centre, but the system of her social education, 
that renders the German woman so hopelessly pro- 
vincial. Recent great events might have led us to 
expect greater results in this direction. The last 
advices from Berlin show that petty personal spites, 
small envyings, backbitings, and jealousies are as rife 
in the Imperial City as in the much-despised little 
Residenz towns. Nor can any change for the better 
be hoped until men and women are allowed, or will 
allow themselves and each other, to mix on terms of 
greater personal equality and dignity. 

Let us look back at the physical conditions of the 
young girl's life. We have seen her sitting hinter'm 
Of en, living in a dry, overheated atmosphere, nib- 
bling at unwholesome nicknacks, pecking at her food, 
and poisoning herself with sweets and sours. A girl 
is seldom sent to school away from home, by reason 
of the extra expense of board and lodging. Every- 
one w T ho has lived in Germany must remember with 
pleasure the gangs of fresh round child-faces passing 



WOMEN. 



183 



through the streets during early morning hours. All 
these little students carry neat knapsacks containing 
books, slates, &c, strapped on their backs, and the 
pavements and the promenades are made merry with 
their chatter. Jahrein jahraus they go, growing less 
round and less rosy as time passes on, until early 
maidenhood is reached. On holidays the children 
meet together and play ; there seems no idea that 
these little brothers and sisters should suffice for each 
other, with the occasional excitement of i a party.' 
Boys and girls do not play together as our boys and 
girls do ; even at a very early age strictest division 
of the sexes obtains. Were boys allowed to burst in 
upon the confabulations and titterings of these little 
misses, and loudly proclaim their scorn (as English 
youth is apt to do) of 1 girls' nonsense,' it might be 
better eventually for all parties. 

As the little girl grows older, she has her coffee- 
parties like her elders, and makes a vast number of 
acquaintances of her own age, so that society forms a 
large ingredient of juvenile life. All the little sayings 
and doings, envyings and uncharitablenesses, are re- 
peated day after day ; the little spites and jealousies 
are kept up through a long course of years, and the 
daily gossip becomes almost a necessity of life. There 
is no 'coming home for the holidays.' The children 
are at home ; they have only more time for the dis- 
cussion of the quarrels and friendships that have 
rejoiced or offended them during the 'half-year;' 
more coffee-drinking, more gossip, and more liberty. 

The child buds into early maidenhood, and then 
this passing to and fro through the streets, where she 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



knows everyone, and is known to all, begins to have 
its disadvantages. She becomes self-conscious, has a 
bowing acquaintance with her friends' brothers, who 
meet her by chance (or otherwise) on their way to or 
from school and college. A system of coquetry is 
now inaugurated, which is not without its influence 
on her character. Hitherto she has had coffee and 
gossip ; but now a fresh stimulant comes to her life ; 
she has something to conceal ; her eyes become less 
candid, and her gaze is not so fearless as it was. 
Here again not the girl, but the system, is to be 
blamed. The sort of frank ' flirtation,' beginning 
openly in fun and ending in amusement, which is 
common amongst healthy, high-spirited boys and 
girls in England, and has no latent element of 
intrigue or vanity in it, but is born of exuberant 
animal spirits, youthful frolics, and healthy pastimes 
shared together, is forbidden to her, and these tacit 
arrangements are made and enjoyed after the sur- 
reptitious manner of stolen fruit. 

Quite young German children are extremely deft 
with their fingers, and it is surprising to see what 
charming specimens of their handiwork these little 
maidens offer at birthday shrines or on Christmas 
trees. It would be well that English governesses and 
schoolmistresses followed the example of German 
ladies who undertake the education of girls in this 
most essential part of a gentlewoman's education ; 
for the most part it is totally neglected in our better- 
class schools, and the present rage for art-needle- 
work has nothing to do with the prosaic essential 
acquaintance that every lady should have with the 



WOMEN. 



darning needle and the cutting-out scissors. As a 
German girl approaches the completion of her educa- 
tion her studies are somewhat relaxed, and she profits 
by the time thus gained to attend once or twice a 
week at a Nahschule, where well-brought-up ladies will 
give her a course of lessons on cutting out, fixing, 
piecing, patching, darning, as well as in every possible 
and impossible sort of ornamental stitchery. She will 
make her brother a set of shirts, and for herself a 
complete outfit against the day when she emerges 
from schoolgirlhood into young-ladyism. 

The rite of Confirmation now comes. In Protest- 
ant Germany it means nothing of the religious enthu- 
siasm, the ardent aspiration, the passionate resolves, 
that often mark the epoch in the minds of our young 
people. There is nothing of ' recollection ' or piety 
about the rite. It simply means, to those whom it 
most concerns, a long dress, visiting cards, a bouquet, 
a lace-frilled pocket-handkerchief, the 4 Du ' of child- 
hood exchanged for the 1 Sie 1 of young-ladyhood, 
and the potential Schlafrock and Morgenhaiibe for 
•early hours. Visitors pour in to offer congratulations 
and presents ; cake and wine and bustle pervade the 
domestic atmosphere ; a droschky is hired, and the 
confirmed young Christian is driven out to pay visits 
and show off her finery. 

German girls have no outdoor amusements, if we 
except skating when the winter proves favourable. 
Boating, riding, archery, swimming, croquet — all the 
active, healthy outdoor life which English maidens 
are allowed to share and to enjoy with their brothers 
is unknown to them. There may be several horses 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



in the stable (as is not unfrequently the case where 
there are cavalry brothers), yet no one dreams of 
training any of them to carry a lady. Such diversions 
are looked upon by the girls themselves as bold, coarse> 
and unfeminine. In proof of this I may mention that 
having once in a Kaffee announced the pleasure I 
had in prospect in the shape of equestrian exercise,, 
a thrill of reprobation and disgust seemed to pass 
through the party. A kind friend leaned towards me 
and whispered, ' Say no more about it : it will make a 
scandal. And you know, my love, it is bold, it is un- 
feminine, it is ungraceful, and — iiberhaupt es ist hier 
keine Mode! It was useless that I said I was going 
to ride with relatives, that I had always been used to* 
ride, and so on. I might have committed crimes and 
been considered less guilty. 1 

' When I grow rich,' said a generous relative to me 
one day in the presence of a young and beautiful 
widow, ' I will make you a present of the prettiest 
pony carriage I can find, and a pair of grey ponies, that 
you may drive yourself 

'Thanks,' I said, laughing, for the prospect 
appeared comically remote in my eyes. 

> How can you laugh ? ' asked my pretty friend. (I 
expected that the noble offer would have impressed her 

1 That these petty prejudices and absurd attempts at tyranny still 
prevail may be gathered from a passage in the Princess Salm-Salm's- 

lately published diary . ' Mrs. General von S , ' says the Princess 

(the same lady whose ' starvation code ' had so outraged the Prince's 
eupeptic sensibilities), ' endeavoured to persuade me that the King [of 
Prussia] had been much displeased at my appearing on horseback near the 
promenade at Ems. She knew it from reliable sources. I did not 
believe it. The kind notice their Majesties took of me caused many 



WOMEN. 



187 



very favourably.) * How can you laugh ? I should 
be very offended if any gentleman proposed to me 
that I should drive myself like a Droschkenkutscher! 

Country walks, thick boots, and water-proof clothes 
are altogether out of the feminine programme, nor 
could you convince these German ladies that a good 
gallop in the open, or a long stretch over the common, 
would morally and physically be much better for 
them, more wholesome and commendable, than the 
close, unhealthy atmosphere of coffee-gossip. It is in 
vain that you tell them such exercises, far from un- 
sexing them, fit them all the better for the duties of 
their sex ; it is difficult for them to hear you out and 
not show the scorn they entertain for you. 

For much that affects the lives of German women 
we must, however, look at the conditions of existence 
generally. In England, where the villages are closely 
dotted about, where noblemen's seats, manor-houses, 
the luxurious villas of retired bankers and merchants 
and lawyers stand thick and threefold, where the 
social position of the clergy is a recognised one, 
country life takes an idyllic turn that the pencil of 
Leech will hand down to posterity. The girls in 
these families are all about equally cultured and well- 
mannered ; they feel no shyness when asked to the 
big entertainments that the duke gives to his country 

pangs of jealousy even amongst my nearest friends.' Princess Salm- 
Salm, judging from internal evidence (we speak ignorantly), we should 
suppose to be an American lady, and the freedom enjoyed under the 
stars and bars would render any such attempted coercion ridiculous in 
her eyes. She disbelieved the majestic pettiness suggested by her 
friends, and touched the truth of this matter with the point of the 
needle. 



188 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



neighbours ; they are not overcome with embarrass- 
ment if the sons of the house let the light of their 
lordly countenances shine upon them. Very often the 
rector's daughter is a far more graceful woman than 
Lady Dorothy or Lady Elizabeth. The schoolfellows 
of these young ladies, though not the cream of the 
cream, are of good position, with brothers in all the 
professions — at the bar, in the army, in India, in the 
colonies, in merchants' and bankers' and lawyers' 
offices. There is a refinement and an ease of manner 
about them that makes their acquaintance desirable 
and their society pleasant. They come up to town 
once or twice a year, and visit largely amongst their 
friends in the different counties of England; and 
belonging to what may, for want of a better term, be 
called the upper middle classes of society, there is yet 
nothing in their language or bearing to define their 
position or indicate their precise rank. They will 
read the same books, hear much the same talk that 
everyone hears, and, having connections 'up and 
down along the scale of ranks,' acquire insensibly 
an ease of manner that has its basis in self-respect 
and a modest independence of, and indifference to, 
other folks' grandeur. But in Germany there are no 
smiling villages where squire and parson and lord of 
the manor meet on terms of friendly equality ; no big 
red-brick houses with paddocks and shrubberies and 
brilliant gardens ; no trim villas with closely shaven 
lawns, geometrical flower-beds, and a ' man and a 
maid ' to keep things going. Germany is a thinly 
populated country ; the scattered villages are mere 
assemblages of huts, huddled together in dismal 



WOMEN. 



muddiness, or rotting away in picturesque desolation. 
The Paehter, or tenant farmer, may have a smart, 
trim abode, and the Batter — not, as is often supposed, 
the patient, plodding * peasant,' but — a sort of yeoman 
farmer, tilling his own little plot, has doubtless gold 
and silver and linen galore cunningly secreted in 
chests and presses, after the manner of his kind in 
other countries. And there, too, is the parson ; but 
neither he nor anyone else thinks of model cottages, 
draining, window-gardening, or the like. In short, 
there is no one to think of it. The farmer is usually a 
greedy, grasping, extortionate man ; the Bauer much 
the same ; the parson, a farmer like the rest, is very 
like the rest, as we shall see elsewhere, in other 
matters. The lord of the soil is a great noble ; the 
estate is twenty, thirty, forty miles in circumference, 
and his well-tilled acres bring him in a vast revenue. 
He comes occasionally for the shooting, and his 
stewards and bailiffs transact the necessary business of 
the estate with him. The ladies of the family are at 
Berlin or Vienna, Ischl or Baden ; some of them are, 
perhaps, 1 placed ' about the Court. What have they 
in common with the womenkind of such lumbering, 
uncouth clods as these ? Now and again, with a 
trampling of horses and a blowing of trumpets, they 
arrive, dimly magnificent through a whirlwind of dust 
and fanfaronade. The people on the estate pause 
with apathetic wonder in their monotonous w r ork, and 
gaze up out of the vast brown, hedgeless fields as 
though the gods had flashed by that way. On Sun- 
day the family pew, which is like a great opera-box, 
will be furnished, and the grdfiiche Familie will yawn 



GERMAN ilOME LIFE. 



through the squalid service. The parson, before he 
begins his discourse, will bow to the sublimities in the 
opera-box, and perhaps, if the countess be bored 
beyond endurance, he may be fetched up to the 
Schloss during the afternoon to make up a second 
whist-party, and play unlimited ' robbers ' into the 
small hours of Monday morning. 

From the foregoing it will be readily understood 
why it is that German women can know nothing of 
the charm of country life. There is no such thing 
as country life, as we understand it, in Germany ; no 
cosy sociability, smiling snugness, pleasant bounties 
and hospitalities ; and above all, for the young folk, 
no freedom, flirtation, boatings, sketchings, high teas, 
scamperings, and merriments generally. ' Society ' 
in small towns is necessarily very restricted, com- 
mercial people (these have hitherto been generally 
Jews) visiting amongst each other, professors and 
professional men's families forming another circle, 
whilst y society ' proper, consisting of officers' families, 
of those ' placed ' about the Court, of the higher civil 
functionaries, with a scattering of the noblesse un- 
attached, who prefer living in town, or have retired 
from active service, regard all outside their own ex- 
clusive circle with supreme indifference, not to say 
contempt. 

Years pass : the young girl is no longer so very 
young ; her friends are beginning to be anxious ; a 
suitable parti must be found. She has not much 
choice. She must marry an officer, or an employe 
as high in office as may be. This is no case of 
curates and croquet, or of barristers and Badmin- 



WOM^iV. 



191 



ton, archery-meetings and Government clerks and a 
villa at Putney. Clergymen are nowhere in German 
' society ' — barristers impracticable (for matrimonial 
purposes), and of bankers, merchants, and commercial 
people generally out of the big towns there can be 
no question. Nevertheless a marriage is arranged ; 
but first there is the knotty point of the Caution to 
be settled. A Caution in its Transatlantic sense 
must not here be presupposed. A Caution in the 
Teuto-technical sense is the sum of fifteen thousand 
Thaler (more or less, according to the grade of the 
intending Benedick), to be deposited, if the lover be, 
as he is almost sure to be, a military man, in Govern- 
ment funds, by the contracting parties, so that, should 
the husband be killed in the service of his country, or 
die an inglorious death at home, the widow may have 
a sufficiency upon which to live standesgemass, or in 
a manner befitting her position. There are, however, 
not very many young couples who can deposit this 
sum, so that, what with money difficulties and the 
scarcity of suitors, the young lady has a somewhat 
uncertain time of it until fate and the Caiction smile 
propitious. 

The betrothed couple are, however, not much 
nearer than they were before : they are never allowed 
to be alone together. They put on their best clothes 
and go about paying visits, and the poor old Frau 
Mama toddles panting after them, always keeping 
the young folks well in view. This may, perhaps, 
account for the singular manners and customs of 
lovers in Germany, their demonstrative familiarities 
being quite calculated to terrify a shy person into 



192 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



apoplexy. The betrothal is, on the whole, a more 
important affair than the wedding. 

The evening before the marriage — the Polier- 
abend, as it is called — a singular ceremony takes 
place. All the friends of the bride's family go to her 
house, and everyone provides himself with some 
piece of crockery to cast before her door, so that 
accumulated pots and sherds render the road impass- 
able. The custom doubtless has its origin in some 
old Sclavonic religious rite, as about the altars and 
places of sacrifice of Sclavonic tribes such heaps 
of pottery are almost invariably found ; but no one 
thinks of such things on occasions like the present. 
Noise appears to be the object, in every available 
discordant form. Unlimited coffee and cakes and 
Bowie are consumed. People arrive in costume, place 
is made for them, and they repeat appropriate and 
inappropriate verses, original or borrowed, whilst they 
present their gifts. Clatter and confusion reign ; it 
is a relief if dancing vary the scene, which generally 
closes with speechifying, toasting, and rather indis- 
criminate allusions of the pointedly personal cha- 
racter. Having brought our young friend so far 
along love's flowery way, we will pause (' Der Wahn,' 
says Schiller in depressing numbers, ' ist kurz, die 
Reu' ist lang '), hoping to meet her again before long 
in all the added dignity and lustre of matronhood. 

It will be understood from the foregoing that 
German marriages, though not concluded in the alto- 
gether conventional manner of the French, have still 
a vast deal less of sentiment and a great deal more 
of calculation about them than the ' gushing ' cha- 



WOMEN. 



193 



racter of the nation might lead us to expect. The 
German has many points of resemblance with the 
Scotchman : he is ' canny ' and long-headed, prudent 
and frugal ; he is sentimental, but not carried away 
by sentiment. ' Wenn der Deutsche schenkt,' says 
Goethe, ' liebt er gewiss ! ' 

For the maiden lady of noble family foresight has 
provided the refuge of the StifL A Stiftsdamc has 
a recognised and official position in society : she 
wears her Order across the breast or on the shoulder 
of her black silk gown in the ' world,' and lives in a 
state of droning comfort when her leave of absence 
expires and she has to retire to her secular cloister. 
The Protestant Stift supplies (in a very advantage- 
ously amended form) the place of the Catholic con- 
vent. The Reformation, not knowing what to do 
with its superfluous spinsters, instituted the Stift, or 
* Foundation for Noble Maidens.' The foundation 
was made in this manner : — A certain number of Pro- 
testant nobles, living within a given circuit, would 
become aware {dans le temps) of a number of mar- 
riageable, but not likely to be married, daughters 
dwelling within their borders. Thereupon they would 
come together, consult, compare, and resolve that 
each count or baron should contribute his thousand 
Thaler (more or less) towards the purchase of lands ; 
that the sum thus invested should give each depo- 
siting party a presentation in perpetuity to the so- 
called Stift. A house or houses would be forth- 
with bought or built ; forests, fisheries, farms, added 
thereto ; an overseer or intendant appointed ; an 
abbess or prioress nominated (probably the lady of 

O 



*94 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



most distinguished descent amongst the nobles con- 
tributing). The land would be farmed, the Stift sup- 
plied with every sort of produce, the accounts audited 
by one or other of the founders, and for all time a 
comfortable — nay, in many cases a luxurious — retreat 
be provided for such maidens as were doomed to 
fade suitorless into the sere and yellow. It will 
easily be understood that in many cases the land 
purchased at a few shillings per acre has, in the 
course of years, risen to an immense value; that 
many of these Stifte have become extremely wealthy, 
and that, so far as material comfort goes, they leave 
nothing to be desired. The rule is a secular one. In 
all cases the ladies are allowed to go into ' society ; ' 
leave of absence for three or six months yearly is 
granted ; marriage is quite a possibility ; friends are 
received with hospitality, even with profusion ; a 
sitting- and bed-room and a personal attendant are 
apportioned to each lady ; and though in some cases 
meals have to be partaken of in common, and per- 
mission asked of the prioress or abbess to take drives 
into the country or a walk into the village, yet the 
severity of rule cannot be complained of. On the 
other hand, there is often a pettiness of tone, a 
narrowness of feeling, a personality, and a prejudice 
that makes life in such institutions a weariness. The 
meanest of all pride prevails — the snobbish elevation 
of rank and title-worship, that adulation of mere de- 
scent, that envy and detraction and rage for be-little- 
ing which is, more or less, the poison of German 
society generally, and the special poison of all small, 
self-contained, self-occupied, self-adulating commu- 
nities. 



WOMEN. 



195 



I have dwelt at some length on the system of 
prying and scandalising that obtains in Germany, 
because it is a crying evil, one that cuts at the very 
root of all confidence, and peeps and whispers with 
a persistence worthy of a better cause ; but I should 
be unfair were I not to add that it is done without 
any conscious malignity — out of desoeuvrement rather 
than of malice prepense, pour passer le temps rather 
than to injure or destroy. Neither can it be possible 
that these ladies believe all the news they promul- 
gate — nay, nor the half of it. It has not unfrequently 
happened to the present w r riter to see the lady whose 
character had just been torn to tatters, or was in 
process of tearing, enter the room with unsuspicious 
confidence, and meet with the warmest of receptions. 
At first one is startled ; upon reflection one under- 
stands that this system of ' murdering characters to 
kill time ' is after all mere amusement (for the mur- 
derers) and a clinging to ' use and w r ont.' 

It will be objected that there are narrow circles 
and parish politics everywhere, and that gossipry is 
not the exclusive privilege of the German. True, 
but it is only when for years and years the same 
local twaddle repeats itself, the same personalities 
and pryings prevail, that the mischievous and offen- 
sive results become overpowering. It will be asked, 
How it is, then, that young English ladies are so 
enthusiastic for Germany and the German life ? 
Simply because they are English — free to take all 
that is pleasant (and there is much that is pleasant — 
nay, even precious — in that life) ; untrammelled by 
all the social tyranny that cribs, cabins, and confines 

o 2 



196 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the ordinary German woman ; bound by no obliga- 
tion to do as others do ; free to come, and go, and 
enjoy; not dreaming in their easy philosophy of life 
of the horror with which such comings and goings, 
sayings and doings, are regarded in strictly German 
circles, nor how loud the reprehension, how utter the 
condemnation, that watches and follows their un- 
suspecting footsteps. An English girl would revolt 
from the tyranny of small things that encompasses 
a German girl's life ; she would start aside like a 
broken bow, rebel overtly, and probably prefer the 
life of a governess (and that is saying much), with 
a sense of work, and independence, and personal 
identity to carry her onwards, to the dull routine of 
comparative comfort and superlative nonentity. 



MEN. 



197 



CHAPTER IX. 

MEN. 

1 The proper study of mankind is Man. ' — Pope. 

When a man, as will now and again happen, has the 
misfortune to write and publish a more than usually 
feeble story, the critics, by a simple yet ingenious 
method, gently convey to him that he has mistaken 
his vocation in life. ' Miss So-and-So/ they say, 'will 
probably be surprised to hear that all her men are 
monsters ; that the arch-angelic do not as yet walk 
amongst us clothed in tweed and broadcloth ; nor do 
Oxford shoes disguise the cloven foot of our acquain- 
tance/ and so on, through paragraphs of infinitely 
cruel jocosity, admirably calculated not only to ex- 
tinguish the well-meaning young man, but also pour 
decourager les autrcs, i les autres ' being the enter- 
prising ladies from out of whose midst his critics are 
supposed to have singled him. 

These papers being avowedly written by a woman, 
she perhaps otight to leave all opinion or comment on 
* the head and crown of things ' to the more com- 
petent virile pen. She would only venture, by way of 
apology and justification, to say thus much : that, if 
6 some power ' have given * the giftie ' to men to see 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



themselves and each other all round as other (men) 
see them, women are not altogether out in the dark ; 
they see men from their own (i.e. the feminine) stand- 
point, and this coign of vantage is not an altogether 
unimportant one. A man in his dressing-gown and 
slippers may show more of the real man that is in him 
to his wife than is ever likely to be known to his 
fellow-swaggerers at the Club, or the Major Penden- 
nises of life with whom he lounges along the Row in 
the morning or sneers languidly through a summers 
afternoon. 

To say of men generally that they are of the 
' superior ' sex is to say very little when applied to 
German men. Unfortunately the genius of the 
language and the scheme of creation do not admit of 
* superiorest ; ' so we must go round about it, and say 
that in Germany the relative position of the sexes is 
what one imagines to be conveyed in the sentence 
' and the sons of God took unto themselves daughters 
of men/ It is not, however, my purpose here to speak 
specifically of the German ' husband,' because that, 
though an essentially feminine view of the subject/ 
would be to limit it to an inconveniently narrow 
sphere ; and a man, whether bond or free, whether 
bachelor or Benedick — ' a man's a man for a' that/ 

And, to begin with the physical aspects of the 
matter, we may venture to affirm, without fear of con- 
tradiction, that from earliest childhood the German 
man has privileges above the German woman, and 
these privileges grow always and increase. W e know 
what their respective physical education is. The boy 
belongs to his Tumverein ; he mixes with his in- 



MEN. 



199 



feriors, superiors, and equals ; he profits by his holi- 
days to take long walking-tours ; he lives entirely 
during these summer excursions in the rough, carrying 
his modest wardrobe in a knapsack, eating how, when, 
where he can ; falling in with parties of other youthful 
students like himself, fraternising on the road, hob-a- 
nobbing in the inns, singing with his full young voice 
the Volkslicdcr, the Studcntenliedcr, the Soldatcnlicdcr, 
of his Fatherland. He comes across ruined castles, 
ancient fortresses, Druid circles, quaint old hunting 
Scltldsscr, convents, churches. Straightway he learns 
all about what he sees ; if he be not himself a student 
or an antiquarian, one or other of the party is. His 
young chest is bared to the breeze ; his strong young 
limbs climb the mountain ; his eye roves keenly and 
restlessly to right and left. What there is to be 
seen he will see ; what there is to learn he will 
learn; what may be known he will know. The 
scents of the thyme and the pine linger in his tawny 
young mane. He takes a draught of milk, a draught 
of water, with the simple food his wallet affords ; he 
lies down, with his plaid under his head, in the shadow 
of the rock, or beneath the murmuring pines and the 
hemlocks, and enjoys his noonday nap. He saw the 
sun rise this morning, and has walked many an upward 
mile since daybreak. Seeing him lying there, you 
may, perhaps, take him for a young artisan (auf der 
Wander schafi), as perhaps he is (for boys of all ranks 
will go out to spend their holidays in the summer 
woods); or perhaps you discern, despite his rough 
clothes and his modest equipment, signs of that good 
blood in him which, as the proverb says, ne peut 
mentir. In any case, though he may not look what 



20O 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



you would call a i gentleman/ he looks a man, with 
manly purpose and intention even in his sleeping 
eyelids and smiling mouth. He will get up presently, 
and go singing through the sunlit woods, a gay, 
cheery, enviable young athlete. So, with a certain 
rough freedom, breathing nature,full of quaint, simple 
prose and poetry, with infinite capabilities of enthu- 
siasm, with dim aspirations and vague yearnings after 
possible impossibilities, the German youth goes his 
way through ideal paths into the great reality of 
the future. 

Speak of the German, and you see the soldier. It 
is not only that the warlike element is the predomi- 
natingone; it is that obedience, punctuality, endurance, 
high courage, silent perseverance, mark the whole 
manner of the man. The compulsory military service, 
so much bespoken, bewritten, commended, condemned, 
has had its fine moral influence on the nation at large. 
A man has served his time as Freiwilliger ; and he 
returns to his groceries, his farmeries, his draperies. 
He has learned exactitude, punctuality, obedience. 
Can there be a finer practical education ? He has 
learned to hear, not to speak, and to obey. In turn 
he will bring such habits of order and thoroughness 
into civil life with him as shall compel promptness 
and obedience, and make the refractory look and the 
insubordinate w T ord alike impossible. Taken from 
the receipt of custom, from the yard-wand or the 
coffee-mill, and set down in the barrack-yard, he 
learns new things, other things, more things, than if 
he passed his life behind a ledger, measuring ribbons, 
or weighing out groceries. His officers are men of 



MEN. 



20 r 



noble blood, of fine type, of fair presence. The very 
aspect of them is an education for him. He admires 
without envying them ; he acknowledges their supe- 
riority and does not hate them for it. For to the 
honour of the German nation let it be said that 
even the rankest Radical spits out his spite less at 
the person than at the thing he hates. With this 
promptness to obey the word of command we find the 
corresponding roughness and readiness in giving it. 
Dismissed from volunteer duty, he is apt to carry 
soldatesquc forms into private life, to indulge in laconic 
utterances and look for military exactitude of obe- 
dience. So much for the non-professional soldier ; for 
the man who may yet have to do real hard service in 
the Landzvchr, or harder yet in the Landsturm, but 
who, for the time being, is released from his military 
duties, may go back to citizen life once more. 

Hitherto for men of gentle birth the army has 
been the only profession in Germany. No man who 
wrote von before his name had any other career open 
to him, unless it were diplomacy ; but it must be 
remembered that in the pre-Imperial days, when 
Prussia was a third-rate Power, diplomacy could 
offer but very limited prospects in life to men of good 
family and small means. The diplomatic represen- 
tatives of the smaller States not unfrequently resolved 
themselves into modest consuls, who, though perhaps 
not quite so ornamental as an ambassador, envoy, or 
minister, were at least equally useful, with the further 
advantage of being infinitely less expensive. Then 
there was the higher civil service (Jwhere Beamteu 
Stand). But even the highest of such posts repre- 



202 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



sented but a dwarfed ambition ; and again, the posts 
were not many, and the ladder to be climbed, rung 
by rung, painfully long ; so that by the time a man 
had attained to the dignity of Finanzminister or 
wirklicher Geheimerath wintry snow would already 
be lying on his ' frosty pow.' 

Again, there is the smaller bureaucracy, whose 
name is unspeakable legion — assessors, auscultators, 
tax-collectors, Zollbeamten, and half a hundred more. 
All these little men are very big in a small way, end- 
lessly prolix, persistent, and pedantic. They love to 
make their authority felt ; they listen to your most 
heartrending appeals with impassive phlegma. They 
prod your picnic basket, poke your luggage, and pry 
into your pass with the official slowness and sang-froid 
that are at once their pride and their delight. They 
turn a deaf ear to your explanations ; they offer 
none in return to your agitated remonstrances. You 
begin to lose patience when you find you are treated 
like a thief and a robber, that you are scurried and 
buffled from pillar to post, that your name is written 
in ponderous tomes, and sand cast, like contempt, on 
the unworthy letters of it. Patience, my friend ; you 
are only being controlled. It is for your good, as 
Squeers jocosely observes when he whacks young 
Dunderhead. 

Speaking roundly, one might say that the Father- 
land is all barrack and bureau. If you have not the 
spiked helmet you will have the red tape, and where 
red tape is not there will be the spiked helmet. 
Muskets point the moral and officialism adorns the 
tale. 



MEN. 



203 



Attorneys — a clamorous, noisy, cackling crew — 
have ever been inodorous in the nostrils of the refined, 
and in Germany you would search in vain for scions 
of noble blood amidst their turbulent ranks. ' I 
do not like,' said Dr. Johnson, referring to a person 
who had just left the room, ' to speak ill of anyone 
behind his back, but I believe the gentleman is an 
attorney.' 

The Church (in Protestant Germany), in spite of 
the late King of Prussia's attempted episcopacies and 
Anglicanism, remains utterly unattractive in aristo- 
cratic eyes. They were literally ' episcopacies.' The 
king who invented the bishop could not create the see. 
Bankers are almost exclusively children of Israel 
(occasionally ennobled — baronisirt — if they have been 
accommodating in the matter of timely loans), and 
whilst, commerce seems to be the prerogative of the 
plebeian the army remains a patrician monopoly. 
But already, if they have not changed, circumstances 
are changing all that. 

However great Germany may be as a military 
nation, bristling all over w 7 ith helmet-spikes and for- 
tresses, she can only become really and abidingly 
great when years of peace shall have consolidated her 
position. Commerce, the child of peace and the 
mother of plenty, is, after all, the furnisher of the thews 
and sinews of war. The country of the milliards 
knows as well as any other country — nay, better, if 
the history of her past finance be worth anything — 
the value of full coffers and the dignity of no national 
debt. That she cannot remain politically great 
unless she become commercially great ; that the 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



fruitful rivalries of peace are the balm and oil her 
bleeding wounds require — there are abundant evi- 
dences to show. In her desire for a wider field and 
ampler opportunities she has stretched out tentative 
fingers across ticklish frontiers, warily touching this or 
that border town, casting covetous eyes towards this 
or that convenient port, sending out consuls to the 
east and to the west, and establishing relations to the 
north and to the south. And these very facts, this 
very attitude, open up vast future prospects to the 
young manhood of Germany. As a great Power 
Prussia (and her dependencies) will be able to dispense 
with petty pride ; noble fathers will see no dishonour 
in having rich sons, bankers and merchants will be 
admitted into ' society,' and honest independence will 
know how to exact respect and hold its own against 
expiring prejudice. Marriages with the daughters of 
rich speculators and contractors are already quite the 
order of the day ; and though one would prefer a 
more independent standpoint, and would rather a man 
should make money for himself than take it from 
another, yet we must not be impatient. Patrician 
blood is found to mix very kindly with plebeian money. 
The young lady is charmed to write the magic prefix 
before her name, and to find herself launched into 
higher circles ; the young gentleman discovers that an 
opulent father-in-law is extremely convenient on 
occasion, and forgives the want of a pedigree in con- 
sideration of the plethora of pelf. One or other of 
the offspring of such a marriage may come into the 
world with commercial instincts (as some babes are 
said to come mouthing silver spoons), and a purely 



MEN. 



205 



ornamental young gentleman and lady thus become 
the unconscious founders of a race of merchant 
princes. 

It has been said that the well-born German is 
distinguished for his morgue and disregard of those in 
a lower station than himself. This was, and is, his 
chief reproach in the eyes of his middle-class fellow- 
countrymen. He does not conceal that he despises 
their want of manner, their glaring solecisms, their 
extraordinary coarseness of behaviour and absence of 
tact. They, who perhaps know as much as he does, 
are richer than he is, are unconscious of all that jars 
and grates upon one of a finer fibre than themselves, 
and are apt to declare that he trades on his nobility and 
assumes a merit that he is far from possessing. * The 
Prussian nobility,' says Heine, * must be regarded in 
the abstract. It relies on the idea of birth, not on 
the concrete reality of money.' Not from the so-called 
Mower orders' is resentment so likely to become 
dangerous, as from the well-educated, underbred 
middle-class — the very middling, if refinement of 
speech, suavity of manner, and gentleness of utterance 
count for anything. The middle-class as we under- 
stand it — one brother a merchant, another in the 
Guards, the eldest son of the house heir to a baron- 
etcy, the youngest walking the earth in an M.B. waist- 
coat and waiting for the family living — is almost 
incomprehensible to the ordinary German mind ; but 
let us hope that the day may not be far distant when 
the arrogance of the aristocrat may be tempered and 
the tone of the citizen refined. So long as commerce 
means mere shopkeeping, every petty grocer writes 



2o6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Kaufmann (merchant) over his shop-door, and every 
Jew usurer signs himself Banquier, it is to be feared 
that a commercial career will not prove very attrac- 
tive in the eyes of, or draw many recruits from, 
the upper ranks of society. It is not given to every 
man to be what in common parlance is called 6 born 
a gentleman ; 1 but if his birth be not gentle, his 
manners may make him so. * For he is gentil/ 
says Dan Chaucer/ that doth gentil dedis/ and we all 
know that a ' cotton lord ' may be a truer gentleman 
than the descendant of a ' hundred earls.' The 
modest independence and self-reliance which bring 
about suavity of manners and an absence at once of 
the servile or the arrogant in a man's intercourse 
with those of another rank is not at a premium in 
Germany, where either self-assertion or obsequiousness 
strikes the outsider with a sense of pained surprise. 

The German gentleman, the man of noble birth, of 
splendid presence, of polished if of cold and arrogant 
manners, fails where we might expect him to fail. 
< Without love/ says our great humourist, ' I can fancy 
no true gentleman ' — love, that is, not of the individual, 
which may be but mere sublimated selfishness, but 
that chivalrous devotion which high-minded man- 
hood ever bears to gentle womanhood. The German 
gentleman may be gallant ; he may be a man of 
pleasure, a lady-killer, a grand viveur. As a rule he 
is perfectly ready to flirt with any pretty woman, to 
make daily Fcnster parades before her windows, to 
whisper soft, sentimental nothings to her during the 
course of the cotillon, it may be even slightly to * com- 
promise' her. She is of course a married woman 



MEN 



207 



(for these attentions would mean marriage to a girl), 
so she knows, or ought to know, how to take care of 
herself. He will go away, and laugh over his little 
social successes when his comrades banter him on his 
bonnes fortunes ; and she will be backbitten in the 
Kaffeen, and a tolerant society will view the matter 
w r ith indifference, unless indeed it comes to such a 
climax as makes indifference no longer possible ; and 
even then an easy-going temper disposes the lookers- 
on generally to be tolerably lenient. Their bark is 
much worse than their bite in these matters, and, 
after all, one must not draw the line too tight. Mar- 
riage is beset with a thousand difficulties ; life is more 
amusing behind the scenes of a theatre than in the 
dull domestic round. One likes to have ones mo- 
ments of relaxation, and eternal parade, civil as well 
as military, is rather a gilding of the lily. Women 
are well enough to be 1 a moment's ornament,' but life 
is easier en garqon. One has a thousand egoisms and 
ambitions to occupy one's time and thoughts, and a 
man gallooned all over with gold and staggering 
under orders cannot be expected to sit like Hercules 
at Omphale's feet. German ladies are not accus- 
tomed to the entire and untiring devotion which 
Englishwomen accept with all the calm unconscious- 
ness of a right. No man rises to open the door for 
you when you leave the room ; if cups of tea or 
coffee have to be handed about, it is the lady of the 
house that will carry them round. She will be re- 
warded with a * Tausend Dank, meine Gnadigste,' but 
the ' most gracious ' will be allowed to trot about all 
the same. A man need not wait in that happy land 



2o8 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



for ■ pain and anguish ' to ' rack the brow ? before the 
ministering angels appear upon the scene. You (one 
of the angels) may search an hour for your sortie de bal 
in a cloak-room before one of that group of glitter- 
ing beings assembled round the door will put out a 
helping hand. When at last you emerge from your 
difficulties, and pass down the stairs, they will draw 
themselves up in stramme militdrische Haltung> click 
their heels together, and bring their heads to the level 
of their sword-belts ; and if that is not devotion, 
chivalric behaviour, and splendid respect the world 
has none to show and you are an exacting and irra- 
tional malcontent. 

In everything the German is controlled. He is 
controlled in his love-makings and marryings ; he is 
controlled in the utterance of his opinion ; he is con- 
trolled in his goings out and his comings in. The 
journalist is liable at any moment to fine and im- 
prisonment, the caricaturist to arrest. Of liberty of 
the press there can be no question, of the license of 
the law no doubt. In the old gambling days of 
Baden and Hombourg no native officer was permitted 
to play at the tables ; the money of the State must 
remain absolutely in the State pocket; but this 
fatherly solicitude for the coin of the country did not 
extend itself to the pocket of the peasant, who would 
stand gloating through long Sunday afternoons at the 
heaps of gold, venture at last his florin or his Thaler, 
and retire into his working-day world on Monday 
a disillusioned chawbacon. Control touches even the 
follies and flirtations of the young. Lately, in a nor- 
thern capital, garrisoned by Prussian troops, an ardent 



MEN. 



209 



young lieutenant and a coy and bashful maiden found 
themselves for a moment, by some rare chance, in a 
deserted tea-room alone. The enamoured youth had 
just caught his fair one by the hand, when her most 
intimate of intimate bosom-friends entered. The poor 
girl started up in terror, and, forgetful alike of her love 
and her lover, broke out, * Pray, pray, best Evelina, 
do not say what you have seen.' Evelina promised, 
and the imprudent maiden returned at once to the 
ball-room. But lo ! next day the story, with various 
embroideries, was circulating through all the Kaffeen ; 
and behold, the day after, the ardent lieutenant 
summoned to an irate general's presence. 1 Young 
man,' said his stern Vorgesetzter> glooming down upon 
him in grim regulation wrath, 'you are transferred to 
depot duty on the frontier ; there you will have ample 
time to reflect on your indiscretion. Es ist Ihnen 
nicht erlaubt jungen Damcn mis dcu JwJiercn Stdndeu 
mt compromittircn! And forth, like ball from the 
cannon's mouth, behold our gay young militaire shot 
over the frontier. Hear this, gallant young English 
gentlemen, horse, foot, and dragoons ; hear it, too. 
young English maidens inclining tender ears to manly 
pleadings, and be thankful that your bosom friends 
are not spies, nor, as a rule, the colonels of our regi- 
ments martinets in matters of the affections. Resis - 
tance in any shape is hopeless ; it will be put down, 
in whatever form or in whatever rank it makes its 
sporadic appearance, with an iron hand. Beneath the 
drapery of that flowing white mantle, that reminds 
you of the crusaders of old, you may plainly perceive 
the steel gauntlet of armed despotism. ' Whilst all 

r 



2IO 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



the others were boasting/ says Heine, ' of how proudly 
the Prussian eagle soared towards the sun I prudently 
kept my eyes fixed upon his claws.* 

The German makes a good colonist because he is 
frugal, patient, and hardy ; but he seems to need a 
transplantation to another soil to shine forth in all the 
excellence that not unfrequently becomes his. The 
German workman at home is dilatory, unpunctual, 
slow, and often extremely ' bungling' in his w r ork. 
There is not the same competition as with us ; if he 
do not choose to hurry himself, you must abide his 
pleasure ; he is the obliger, you the obliged. You 
give him a model, and he executes his copy not 
amiss ; it only falls short of supreme excellence ; a 
little more finish, and it would have been absolutely 
well done. The German labourer is a marvel of heavy 
artfulness : he seems always to have something to do 
that interferes with continuous work ; either he has 
to spit upon his hands, or to adjust his raiment, or to 
take a dram, or have a i crack ' with a comrade, or 
pick a quarrel with an enemy ; in short, he is inven- 
tive in this respect to a degree that his general stolidity 
would never lead you to suspect. The writer remem- 
bers watching throughout a period of some months 
an English ' navvy ' who had command of a gang of 
Germans engaged upon some waterworks. Abuse 
flowed freely from the lips of the stalwart Briton, and 
though he spoke an unknown tongue the desired 
effect was produced ; the instant, however, his atten- 
tion was withdrawn, or his amenities ceased, the stolid 
crew abandoned all active labour and became passive 
spectators of the general scene. * I'd liever have one 



MEN. 



211 



o' ourn nor five on 'em/ said that British 1 navvy,' in a 
tone of rueful indignation, one day to a sympathetic 
auditor who was watching the slow progress. Even 
the stalwart frame, the loud voice of the man, and the 
free use of his choice vernacular had ceased to have 
its effect, and the gloom of despair hung heavy on his 
brow. Yet we know that two-thirds of the sugar- 
bakers, bakers, and tailors in London are German, and 
that America speaks largely the language of Hans 
Breitmann. It would seem that the sight of incessant 
activity and untiring energy universally prevailing 
around is necessary to arouse the German, and make 
him shake off the lethargy that otherwise possesses 
him, for if we study the lists of commercial names 
we shall be led to the inevitable conclusion that he 
is as successful in commerce as he is in war. 

Crimes of violence are of very rare occurrence 
in Germany ; the German is not cruel, he does not 
murder, he does not assassinate, he does not beat his 
wife or kick her with hobnailed shoes : he does not 
love blood. Bloodshed is distasteful to him unless, 
as in the Franco-Prussian war, it be his duty to shed 
blood ; then he consents to butcher and be butchered 
(as during the awful days of Gravelotte and Mars-la- 
Tour) with almost automatic endurance. But whilst 
we allow for the difference of temperament that dis- 
tinguishes the Teuton from the Celt, we must concede 
that education counts for something in this matter. 
Educate the masses, and they will not love, as the 
French lower orders do, to welter, when excited, in 
the blood of their fellow-men, to lick their lips in 
savage lust to lap it again. The German is generally 

r 2 



212 



GERMAN HOME LTEE. 



rough, and sometimes brutal, but humanity, on the 
whole, prevails, and the brute in him is less than the 
man. Indeed, that sort of 1 sentiment ' which is so 
marked a characteristic of the modern Teuton is to 
be found even in the dramatis persona of the police 
reports. 

1 It is characteristic,' says a modern writer, speak- 
ing of his fellow-countrymen, 'that our German rascals 
have always a certain sentimentality sticking to them. 
They are no cold-blooded knaves of calculation, but 
are blackguards of sentiment. They have Gemiith, 
and take the warmest interest in the fates of those 
they have robbed, so that one cannot be quit of them. 
Even our distinguished chevaliers dHndustric are not 
mere egoists who steal for themselves, but court co}^ 
Mammon to do good with their ill-gotten gains/ 

In the old historic days of the small Residenz 
towns the unwary stranger who found himself at 
Court was, if of unsophisticated mind, literally blinded 
and bewildered by the blaze of stars and decorations 
that glittered in the firmament. Awe-struck by the 
cloud of heroes and veterans, he prepared, as though 
wandering through the Walhalla of the universe, to 
put his mental shoes from off his feet, in acknowledg- 
ment that he was standing on the holy ground of 
heroism. But when, upon enquiring, he ascertained the 
truth of the matter, and learned that every serenity, 
transparency, or impalpability passing by that way, 
and dining at the Grand Ducal board, would have to 
send, as a matter of mere routine, the * order ' of his 
State to Court officials, first, second, or third class, each 
according to his kind; when he learned that this blazing 



MEN. 



213 



star, as large as a 1 iccadilly birthnight illumination, 
had been conferred on the occasion of the grandes 
chasscs ; that that noble order was bestowed on the 
Duke's representative at the baptism of an arch- 
duchess, and the other resplendent decoration was but 
the evidence of an Imperial dinner-party — he would not 
unfrequently go his sardonic way, sneering the sneer 
of the cynic at the tinsel and frippery of such supreme 
sham. 

The writer of these lines remembers a most 
worthy, inoffensive man upon whom fate had most 
inappropriately conferred the combined offices of 
Grand Chambellan de la Cour and TJicater-Intendant. 
He had accompanied his royal master to every Court 
In Europe, and his sovereign being of convivial turn 
and addicted to i dining ' the princes who passed by 
his way, stars and garters continued to flow in upon 
the first official of the Court. The wags were pleased 
to suggest all sorts of incongruous and incompatible 
positions for the * thick-coming ' decorations, and it 
w r as feared that he would at last, however unwillingly, 
be forced, all the rest of his person being pre-occupied, 
to sit upon the orders of the future. 

There is a characteristic anecdote of Prince Bis- 
marck in relation to this subject, which may appropri- 
ately be quoted here. Herr von Bismarck, standing on 
a bridge, was watching the groom watering his horses. 
The animal which the groom rode stumbled and 
threw the man into the lake. Herr von Bismarck 
"tore off his uniform and took a 'header' after the 
unlucky servant, bringing with difficulty his burden 
to land. The bystanders who witnessed the scene 



214 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



memorialised the Prussian Humane Society, and in 
consequence Herr von Bismarck received the simple 
medal of that institution. In the early days of his 
fame, when as yet this was the only decoration that 
adorned his broad breast (and one must have lived in 
Germany to realise how pitiable an object in the eyes 
of his fellows is a diplomate without decorations), he 
was asked with a polite sneer, by a distinguished col- 
league, what was the meaning of this modest medal. 
' It means that I have now and then the habit of saving 
a man's life', replied Herr von Bismarck, his stern 
glance qualifying the half-jesting words. 

Great were the envy, hatred, malice, and all un- 
charitablenesses that fermented in female breasts on 
these occasions. The adjutants' wives had always a 
grievance. One would complain that her husband, 
holding a double office about the Court, should not 
have had a first-class decoration ; another would 
weep that she, whose family was of the ancient of the 
earth, must endure the slight of seeing her spouse 
receive an order of the third class, while the little pert 
upstart who had married the Obersiallmcister pranced 
past her in an ornament made of the diamonds 
picked out of the Grand Cross, that he, the Master of 
the Horse, ought never to have had ! The infinite 
littleness of such a life was the fair butt of fermenting 
' patriots ; ' no wonder that Radical writers brought 
what wit they could to bear on the subject, or that 
the reformers were great on fossil feudalism. For a 
people that had discovered gunpowder, printing, and 
the Critique of Pure Reason such a spectacle included 
almost every humiliation ; the wonder to all lookers- 



MEN. 



215 



on being not so much how, as by whom, that vast 
revolution which is called Imperialism has been 
brought about. The united Fatherland, the old dream 
of national unity, is realised, but the very dreamers 
themselves must, one would think, be still rubbing- 
incredulous eyes, seeing after what an unforeseen 
fashion they have awakened. 

Yet Prussia has indisputably this one glory above 
all the other countries of Teutonia, that, whilst they 
have had gossipries, scandals, intrigues, nests of 
squabbles, and parish politics, she has a history. 
Her Electors have been the elect, her kings have 
been the ken-ning men ; they have known and they 
have done ; abstract knowing could not help them, 
only concrete doing — alert, restless, thorough ; look- 
ing into everything, examining, proving ; scant mercy, 
short justice ; frugal, thrifty, hardy, sharing common 
perils with the common soldier, keeping kingly state 
when kingly state was demanded ; rewarding, punish- 
ing, reprimanding, with here a genial act and there a 
jovial word ; the Landcsvatcr, not the king alone, but 
the father of his people. Other knowers and doers 
looking upwards, not because of the mere kingship of 
their chief, but with fullest confidence in his power 
and will, both to know and to do, arose in their places, 
each in his Fach, the thing done varying according 
to time and circumstance, according to person and 
place ; valuable chiefly not for the magnitude of it, 
but for the reality of it. 

The history of the House of Hohenzollern is the 
history of Prussia — nay, ' if aught of prophecy ' be 
ours, bids fair to prove the history of Germany. We 



2l6 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



have seen a gallant old King at the head of a sorely- 
tried army, enduring hardships with the courage of an 
adolescent ; we have seen the Crown Prince sharing 
common perils with the common soldier; we have 
seen all the available princes of the blood fighting, 
marching, watching, enduring, conquering, and dying 
side by side with the peasant ; rained upon, snowed 
upon, hailed upon, stormed at by shot and shell ; 
travel-stained, blood-stained, mud-bespattered, war- 
be-tattered; not mere 'men with muskets,' but soldiers 
to the backbone, one and all, prince, peer, and peasant, 
willing to die for the Fatherland. 

True valour, not rash daring, patient endurance, 
not foolhardy escapades, steadfastness of heart and 
stability of mind, inspired these men, who stood up 
to fight for their belief, to die for what they thought 
the justice of their cause — not the light Greek fire 
of inflammable enthusiasm, such as caught the boule- 
vards one day in July, and set all Paris, like straw, 
blazing, but the deep volcanic fire of conviction, long 
smouldering, darkly hidden, portentous, unquench- 
able, unless, indeed, by crimson seas yet to flow. It 
is supremely characteristic of the genius of the two 
nations that whilst the French were hysterically 
shrieking 4 A Berlin ! ' falling upon each other's necks, 
and vowing to celebrate their Emperor's birthday in 
the palaces of Prussia, the German polished his arms, 
sang his ' Watch on the Rhine,' said no word of Paris, 
and before many months were over crowned his 
gallant old King emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at 
Versailles. This is the history of the German army ; 
all honour to it and to those who led it on to victory. 



MEN. 



217 



In civil life it was in old days the pride of the 
Prussian official that he lived narrowly, that only by a 
close economy was he able to make those two proverbial 
ends meet which in domestic economy is considered 
so desirable a result. Parsimony was his pride ; his 
private economies went to enrich the coffers of the 
State, and his patriotism was of the type of which 
Virgil says, i The noblest motive was the public good/ 
For him a dinner of Spartan broth, and the mens 
conscia recti therewith, was better than all the flesh- 
pots of the Fatherland unseasoned by the antique 
virtues. The Fabricius type is, alas ! extinct, gold- 
scorners impossible, and the austerity of Cincinnatus 
a thing of the past. Imperialism obliges, and osten- 
tation is now the order of the day. Representative 
officials receive handsome salaries ; splendid emolu- 
ments rain down on the worthy ; the day for small 
economies is over ; the Fatherland has to be ' repre- 
sented/ and the country of the milliards must show 
itself great in all directions. 

It is little understood or realised in England that 
pomp and circumstance illustrate at Berlin the glories 
of the new Empire after a brilliant fashion. There is, 
indeed, not one Court, but many ; not only the Em- 
peror and the Prince Imperial, but all the other 
princes of the House of Hohenzollern keep up official 
state, whereof the exponents are gorgeous uniforms, 
resplendent liveries, showy equipages, and brilliant 
entertainments. We may think how dull by com- 
parison our deserted quasi-republican capital appears 
in the eyes that prize pomp and pageantry, and how 
strange the utter absence of all official glitter and 



218 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



grandeur to those accustomed to the presence of a 
Court. We take our German friends to the Horse 
Guards (all we have of magnificence to show), and 
point out the imposing appearance of our Household 
troops. ' Have you ever seen our Gardes du Corps ? ' is 
the only comment — 'splendid giants, mounted on huge 
chargers, wearing a classic silver helmet crested with 
eagles' wings, a dazzling silver cuirass, and juste-au- 
' corps of "white samite, mystic, wonderful"?' You 
perhaps say No. 'Ah, then, indeed ! 1 replies your; 
Prussian friend, as one who makes allowances for your 
ignorant worship. 

The modern German is likely to become a thorn in 
the flesh of humanity at large, not because he is victo- 
rious, but because he is for ever blowing the blast of his 
victories on the trumpet of fame. The braying of that 
brazen instrument is, of necessity, not so sweet in his 
neighbours' ears as in his own ; yet should you venture 
to remonstrate he will fix a quarrel upon you, and you 
will have abjectly to ask him to continue his melodious 
strain. It is not enough that his country has become 
one of the great Powers of Europe ; he wants you to 
say that it is the greatest. Success is so sweet to him, 
power so new, triumph so intoxicating, and the old 
Radical dream of a united Fatherland realised, he him- 
self hardly knows how, in Bismarcko-Imperialism is 
such a bewildering experience, that he stands on the 
highway, pistol in hand, and exacts your admiration 
or your life. It is not enough that you have at an 
earlier stage of the journey already paid your tribute 
of admiration ; you must pay it again. You are to go 
on admiring ; your awe and your respect are to be- 
come vocal ; if you are not loudly, consistently, per- 



MEN. 



219 



sistently, with the Fatherland you are against it. It 
is by sufferance that your humble vehicle rolls along 
the Emperor's highway. Get out and grovel, then all 
shall be well with you ; resist, and you shall be torn 
out of your coach, and the great jackboots will kick 
you ignominiously into space, and the big man will go 
his swaggering way with a grim smile behind his 
tawny moustache, as one who exterminates the lively, 
pertinacious pidcxirritans, otherwise sublimely big and 
indifferent. 

The crumpled rose-leaf on Germany's bed of glory 
is, that she cannot get every other nation to admire 
her as much as she admires herself ; and in her present 
egotistical attitude would fain extract what she covets, 
if not otherwise, then a force cV amies. 

' Man braucht ja nur zu mucksen/ said a lively Ger- 
man friend to me during the war-scare of '75, 'und 
gleich geht's wieder los.' I could only offer up a silent 
prayer that we might not be caught ' grumbling,' and 
that the battle of Dorking might be chronicled by some 
Froissart of the future. ' There is, alas ! no want of 
signs,' a German professor writes to Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, ' that the happy contrast to French self- 
sufficiency which Germany heretofore displayed is 
disappearing since the glories of the late victories. 
They ridicule Frenchmen, and yet what animates them 
is, after all, the French spirit translated into German.' 
The rampant patriotism of so-called Prussian Liberals, 
whose talk is of German liberty, German thorough- 
ness, German insight, German wit, German justice r 
and German generosity, has been found to prove 
afflictive on more than one occasion to the more- 
modest of their fellow-countrymen. * The patriotism 



220 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of the German consists therein/ says Heine, 'that 
his heart grows narrower, contracts, like leather in the 
cold, and hates all that is foreign. He is no longer a 
citizen of the world, an European; he is only a narrow- 
minded German/ 

It is this uneasy tone, this monopoly of adulation, 
this exacting, suspicious restlessness, that tells tales 
of the fever of ambition pulsing through every vein 
of the new system. Fever has a false strength that 
looks to the sound man much like health ; let him 
look again, and in the glare of the patient's eye he 
will see evidences of the distempered blood, and will 
be careful to soothe rather than to irritate. When we 
speak of the one crumpled rose-leaf in Prussia's bed we 
speak hyperbolically. Hers is no rose-strewn couch ; 
on the contrary, it is, as those who know her best best 
know, an uneasy bed ; a bed that will have to be made 
again and again, lucky for her if so at last it become 
a place of rest. To leave metaphor — her extent of 
frontier is immense ; she will yet need all that is best 
in her best men. Austria may remember some day 
the recommendation which she was unable to resent 
when given, that she should transfer her capital from 
Vienna to Pesth. The advice might in itself be 
good enough, but we are not apt to relish good advice 
from victorious foes. At any moment Bavaria may 
break away. Hanover harbours resentment ; Scan- 
dinavia hates Prussia for her ruthless want of faith ; it 
is known that the coming Czar 1 is intensely anti- 
Prussian, and that the long lists of Germans who 

1 Written in November 1875, before any rumour of Czar Alexander's 
temporary retirement had been noised abroad. 



MEN. 



221 



fill distinguished positions in army and State are 
offensive, beyond any present possibility of expression 
to a very large party in Russia. Alsace and Lorraine 
have, as Elsass and Lothringen, to be kept under, 
and increasing vigilance must inspire fear where no 
love is. And if Elsass and Lothringen, why not also 
possibly, in the less pleasant days that may be coming, 
Kurland and Liefland likewise ? To say nothing of 
Belgium and the low-lying countries with convenient 
canals and opportune sea-ports, and a language, that 
is in itself suggestive, for it must be acknowledged 
that— 

' the difference is not much 
Between the sound of Deutsch and Dutch.' 

Since 1870 the aggregate revenues of the lesser 
States which compose the German Empire are stated 
to have increased from 42,000,000/. to 54,000,000/., 
which would appear to proclaim a certain amount of 
civil prosperity. But the 12,000,000/ is absorbed by 
the additional military burden that has been the con- 
sequence of the victorious issue of the Franco- Ger- 
man war. There is an increase of taxation of about 
30 per cent, on the old inglorious, easy-going times,, 
and the conquerors have not only to pay largely with 
their pockets, they pay also in their persons. The 
limit of age for military service has been suppressed, 
and now that the glitter of glory is subsiding there 
are many persons mean-minded enough to repent not 
only the blood, but the gold it has cost, and will 
continue to cost, the country. ' If Europe should ever 
be ruined/ says Montesquieu, lit will be by her 
warriors.' 



222 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



When we speak of the German of the present 
day, we have all of us, unconsciously, the grand 
modern prototype in our minds — the man of blood 
and iron* the Hammer-man, the Thunderer, the 
Baresark, the Bismarck — the great typical heroic 
figure, that will go down to future ages colossal, mo- 
mentous, immortal. He, the greatest, comes home to 
the smallest, to men's business and bosoms in a special 
manner ; the likeness of him hangs in the humblest 
hut. But for him Hans and Michel had not laid down 
their lives in French mire and clay ; but for him food 
were not so dear, nor widows so many, nor wives so 
few ; but for him taxes had not been so rigorous, nor 
money so scarce. Yet he is the idol of the populace 
— of that populace which erewhile stoned, lampooned, 
caricatured, and reviled him ; of that populace that 
was nothing more than mud-seas at his feet on the 
vast field of the Fatherland. 

Now he reigns supreme ; the contempt he once 
showed for them is become the enemy's portion ; the 
people are grown his willing instruments. He has 
known how to read the signs of the times, to seize the 
chances of the moment, to wield and to weld ; to 
mould the old order of things into a new order ; to 
root out the republican rabies ; to crush down the 
Radical spirit ; to grasp the national mind ; to hold 
the nation's heart ; to venture, to succeed, to dare, 
and to do. The national vanity, the popular pride, 
have been flattered by his miraculous successes ; 
surely a grateful people will foster their hero. Their 
good old Emperor is well enough, but even he had 
not been but for Bismarck. He, gallant old gentle- 



MEN. 



223 



man, has scruples, hesitations, tendernesses of con- 
science, regrets ; is not much other than any private 
man — him we do not specially care to go out and 
greet. As for princes, clothed in soft raiment, dwell- 
ing in kings' palaces, their name is legion ; but this 
man, der Einzigc, the only One, unique ; his like not 
again to be seen this side of eternity ; a prophet, and 
more than a prophet — him we will worship, before 
him we will fall down. A gigantic mass of all that 
makes Manhood, he carries a high look with him ; 
fire and reality, as well as blood and iron, are in that 
great figure and big brain. He speaks, and it is as 
though the king of beasts sent his leonine roar before 
him through the forests of which he is lord. That 
orator, erst so eloquent, seems now but froth and 
fribble. The attempted epigram of the penultimate 
patriot dwindles into mere spite. Prudence becomes 
pedantry ; warning, the mumblings of blind senile 
leaders of the blind ; threat, the mere futile squeak 
of peevish incompetence. The little sneers have 
struck too low, they fall unheeded at his feet ; he will 
not stoop to notice them ; let them lie : but from his 
height, god-like, daemonic, he will pour forth his lava 
stream of scathing eloquence, w T hich, by mere attrac- 
tion of gravitation, reaches its destination in the in- 
finite flats beneath him. This stinging tongue, this 
arrogant intellect, this ruthless will, this keen daring 
and restless ambition, what are they but the outcome 
of the ages ? In him you see the typical German ; 
the giierre-m^riy the war-man; the gar-m^n — the 
whole man ; nay, rather a demi-god unfathomable, 
terrible. There is, in all modern history, no figure 



224 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



like this figure, no mind like this mind, unless it be 
the brief apparition of a Mirabeau on a background 
of unaccomplished destiny. A man for men to fear, 
for women to love ; for, beside that primeval titanic 
force, there dwells another man in him in strange and 
striking contrast with the Briareus of the Tribune — a 
gentle, genial, human-hearted man ; witty, winning ; 
loving the soft sound of women's voices, the beauty 
of bright eyes, the prattle of children, the yellowing 
woods, the setting sun. A Triton, indeed, but not 
amongst minnows. ' No great general,' says Froude, 
'ever arose out of a nation of cowards, no great 
statesman out of a nation of fools.' That the mute 
Moltkes and bashful Bismarcks of the Fatherland are 
many we may be sure ; but history is careful only of 
the type. Looking at such a man as this, surrounded 
by such men as these, we, who are but spectators 
of the drama, are almost tempted, since finite man 
cannot go on infinitely, to re-echo the prayer of Para- 
celsus, and .cry, ' Make no more giants, God, but 
elevate the race at once ! ' 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



CHAPTER X. 

MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 
' Hail, wedded love ! ' — Milton. 

MARRIAGE is surely the golden key to the celestial 
portals of Liberty. Let us see how it has fared with 
our young friend since the frolic festival of the Polter- 
abend. The marriage itself is, by comparison, but a 
tame affair. Wedding favours, marriage tours, best 
man, bridesmaids, lockets, general regardlessness of 
expense, and lime de miel y sacred to seclusion and 
sentiment, are honoured in the breach rather than in 
the observance ; and where people have not large 
means, or at least cannot afford these luxuries without 
inconvenience, we may fairly applaud the practical 
common sense which decrees that young people in 
love can be just as happy at home a month sooner as 
a month later. For the 'great' these post-nuptial 
extravagances are permissible, for the ' general ' they 
are entirely out of the question. The bride, and not 
(as with us) the bridegroom, furnishes the house, plate, 
linen, and all that is requisite for the young couple to 
set up housekeeping. The gifts that flow in are, gene- 
rally speaking, of the most moderate, not to say 
shabby, character ; so that the burden and heat of the 

Q 



226 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



day fall upon the parents of the young lady, and if there 
should be half a dozen daughters the consideration of 
ways and means is apt to be a rather serious one. 

The knot tied, domestic life begins. To choose 
one's own dresses (subject to marital approval) ; to 
have one's coffee as strong as one likes ; not to be 
stinted in sugar ; and to go three times a week to the 
theatre, with appropriate variations de toilette ; to 
make oneself, perhaps, renowned as a Hausfrau — who 
would not accept such a fate with the rapture good 
fortune proverbially excites ? And yet — and yet there 
have been found uncomfortable souls to whom these 
delights have not sufficed. Of such misguided females 
let us keep silence ; it is ever our duty to represent 
the best of its type. 

' Entre l'arbre et l'ecorce,' says the shrewd old 
French proverb, ' ne mettez pas le doigt.' 

We, in England, are accustomed to think that, be 
her lord and master never so lordly and masterful, a 
woman reigns, as a rule, supreme in her own house ; 
on matters of domestic detail, be he otherwise never so 
despotic, he will scarcely presume to speak, nor does 
his voice, loud enough, perhaps, otherwhere, often 
make itself heard on questions of household arrange- 
ment. Meddling men are altogether exceptional and 
irregular in English households. 

The precise contrary obtains in Germany; the 
husband is the king, the wife merely the prime minis- 
ter. He sits in his arm-chair, smoking perennial pipes, 
and auditing, with all the severity of a Lycurgus, the 
poor little woman's abject accounts. He knows all 
about the butter and dripping, swears at excesses in j 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 227 

soap and Sauerkraut, is abusive as to fuel, tyrannical 
as to candles and red herrings, and terrible on eggs 
and bacon. A woman is no more a mistress of her 
own house in Germany than you or I (despite the 
Laureate) are masters of our fate. She is simply an 
upper servant — nay, of many a gently born and gently 
bred lady it may be said that the dull drudgery of her 
life is such as no upper servant would endure, such as 
would be scarcely tolerable to ' the maid that does the 
meanest chars.' The maid can at least creep into dim 
obscurity when her hours of work are at an end ; but 
the lady has to clothe herself in such raiment as her 
station is supposed to demand ; and to leave weariness 
of the flesh and vexation of spirit in the kitchen with 
the pots and pans. The lady in black silk (really an 
' upper servant') who consents to superintend the 
Browns' gorgeous establishment for the moderate 
consideration of fifty pounds a year (everything found, 
and no indelicate enquiries as to perquisites) would 
scorn to employ herself in the menial manner common 
to many noble ladies in Germany. Do I not, for 
instance, remember my neighbour, pretty little 

Baroness B , like the maid in the nursery rhyme, 

standing ' in the garden hanging out the clothes 1 ? 
Have I not gazed with a tender admiration (of which 

to this day she is unaware) at Frau von C 's fair 

face as I watched her from my window ironing her 
husband's shirt-fronts all through a blazing afternoon, 
whilst now and again a diamond-drop would roll from 
her brow and fall, audibly hissing, on the iron ? Have 
I not seen, with a sadness I dared not show, the in- 
defatigable Hauptmanninn von Z baking, boiling, 

Q2 



228 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



stewing, pounding, sifting, weighing, peeling, with an 
energy that positively paralysed me at my post of ob- 
servation ? She would chaffer with the peasants who 
brought butter and eggs to the kitchen door, cheapen- 
ing their already miraculously cheap offerings ; she 
would scold the slavey (who, as we know, is no slavey 
at all), tap her girls smartly on the shoulders, and rap 
her boys over the knuckles, and never ask for change 
or rest. Who ate all the good things she compounded ? 
I suppose her husband, a big burly man, with a red 
face and beery, guttural voice. I could hear him 
snoring away all the early part of the summer's after- 
noon (the windows were open towards the garden), 
when at four o'clock he would cast his Schlafrock and 
Pantoffeln, get himself into regimental clothes again, 
buckle in his big waist, and go swaggering down to 
his club, ogling every girl and woman he met by the 
way. I saw the other day that he had been decorated 
with I know not how many stars and crosses, and 
had grown into a lieutenant-colonel, arffl. I could not 
help wondering how it was with his poor little wife, 
who had been under fire so long ; had marched and 
counter-marched, and come to the front like a gallant 
little volunteer, always obedient to the word of her 
superior officer, cheery and uncomplaining. Has she, 
too, got her slow promotion, and stepped out of the 
ranks beyond the kitchen range, beyond the whole 
batterie de cuisine, with the order of merit on her 1 
faithful, modest little breast ? I doubt it. I dare say, 
if I could look in upon her now, she is still cuffing sup- 
plementary boys off to school, lest they should disturb 
the paternal post-prandial slumbers, and rating the 
slavey as energetically as ever. 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



229 



In the households of military men, or in those 
of the hohere Beamten, the womenkind gain little 
— comparatively little — by the promotion of their 
lords. No greater independence of action is 
granted them, no wider sphere or larger in- 
terests. Washing-days come round as before ; the 
potatoes have to be peeled, the carrots scraped, and 
the slavey driven ; the stockings to be knitted, the 
shirt-collars to be ironed, and the eternal locking and 
unlocking to go on, with very slight modifications, just 
as it did five, ten, twenty years ago. The master is 
decorated; he has new titles, becomes more expensive, 
generally ornamental, and sublime ; he goes to the 
Ministerium or the Kammer ; he sits upon the Bench, 
or he wrangles in Parliament, or he elaborates the 
Kriegspiel ; he comes in contact with men of various 
shades and colours of opinion ; at the club he reads 
the daily papers and learns how the world wags ; he 
plays whist, goes to the theatre, and, if he have nothing 
to do, returns home again about nine o'clock. Having 
discussed, so far as was prudent, all political news at 
the club, he is hardly likely to begin on the state of 
the outer world when he finds himself once more in 
the bosom of his family. Besides, women don't 
read the newspapers ; what is said and done in their 
infinitesimally small circle is more to them than all 
the huge disasters of humanity, the Kaffeeclack of 
more significance than kings and Kaisers toppling to 
their ruin, the rumour of a scandal of greater interest 
than all the vast problems and conflicts of the social 
and moral universe. And so a little local talk is all 
that is likely to turn up, and, as it is very local in- 
deed, and has been revolving for the last thirty years 



230 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



on his, and the last twenty years on her, part (for at 
five they both knew a fair amount of town-gossip), the 
conversation is not precisely of a nature to make them 
forget the time or be heedless of the coals and candles. 

We are accustomed to think of Germans that they 
are a domestic people. The truth is that of domes- 
ticities there is enough and to spare ; but of domestic 
life, as we understand it, little or nothing. Beyond 
eating, drinking, and sleeping under one roof the 
sexes have little in common. The woman is a slave 
of the ring ; for the wife the baking and brewing, for 
the husband the cakes and ale ; for her the toiling and 
spinning, for him the beer and skittles ; for her the 
sheep-walk of precedent and the stocking of virtue, 
for him the paradings and prancings ; for her the 
nippings and screwings, for him the pipings and 
dancings ; for her the dripping-jar and the meal-tub, 
for him stars and garters, and general gallooning, 
glitter, and sublimity. 

' German marriage/ cries Heine, with one of 
those outbursts of candour which his offended coun- 
trymen have characterised as cynical, i German mar- 
riage is no true marriage. The husband has no wife, 
but a serving-maid, and he still goes on living his 
intellectually isolated life even in the midst of his 
family.' 

In a comic paper there appeared the other day, 
amongst advertisements for things required, but 
scarcely likely to be met with — 

1 Wanted, a lady help, with deft fingers, who can 
open oysters, peel walnuts and prawns, and make 
toast/ 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN, 



231 



Now, what some English wag treats as an impos- 
sible production German home life offers wholesale 
to the spectator. The woman is there to pick the 
shrimps, shell the lobsters, and peel the potatoes of 
her lord and master. What wonder, then, if he be 
lordly and masterful ? His creature comforts are 
materially increased, and his pocket spared, by the 
excellent existing arrangements. The Hausfrau saves 
him a servant — indeed, she saves him unknown quan- 
tities — by her thrift and labour. She has an interest in 
the firm, such as no paid hireling could have ; she is 
to the manner born, and knows life under no other 
aspect ; nor does she take it amiss that her spouse 
swaggers and gambles with the surplus coin that has 
been retrenched by the cheese-parings and flint- 
skinnings that habitually exercise her frugal mind. 

1 After visits and finery, ' says Hazlitt, ' a married woman of the old 
school had nothing to do but to attend to her housewifery. She had 
no other resource, no other sense of power than to harangue and lord 
it over her domestics. Modern book education supplies the place of 
the old-fashioned system of kitchen persecution and eloquence. A well- 
bred woman now seldom goes into the kitchen to look after servants. 
Formerly what was called 6 ' si good manager " ( ' * she is a priceless Haus- 
frau." writes Goethe of one of his fair friends to another), an exemplary 
mistress of a family, did nothing but hunt them from morning till night, 
from one year's end to another, without leaving them a moment's rest, 
peace, or comfort. Now a servant is left to do her work without this 
suspicious tormenting interference and fault-finding at every step, and 
she does it all the better. A woman, from this habit, which at last 
became an uncontrollable passion, would scold her maids for fifty years 
together. Now the temptation to read the last new poem or novel, 
and the necessity of talking of it in the next company she goes into, 
prevent her, and the benefit to all parties is incalculable.' 1 

That a woman should be her husband's helpmeet 

1 Hazlitt's Tabletalk. 



232 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



as well as his housekeeper ; that the noblest union is 
not one of supreme authority and abject submission; 
that the wife should 'sway level to her husband's 
heart that she is there not only to sew on his shirt- 
buttons and darn his socks, but also, if needs be, ' to 
warn, to comfort, and command ; ' that her household 
motions may be light and free, a spirit yet a woman 
too ; and that she may, if she be so willed, come i at 
the last to set herself to man like perfect music unto 
noble words ' — is a view of marriage too heretical for 
any orthodox German lady to entertain. The subj ection 
of woman dates from the Creation, and no new-fan- 
gledness shall obliterate the precedent of Paradise. 

I remember at an aesthetic tea a quiet and out- 
wardly insignificant little person being called upon 
by our host (her husband a German gentleman of 
ancient lineage) to produce some translations which 
she had made from one or other of the great poets. 
The verses were put into the hands of a certain Dr. 

R , a man whose highest ambition it was, mira- 

bile dictu, to edge himself ' any way 1 into society. 
He was a person of assured standing and acknow- 
ledged merit in his own particular circle ; known as 
a blind Conservative, and as the recipient of several 
gold medals • fur Kunst und Wissenschaft/ bestowed 
upon him by various appreciative potentates and 
Powers for his exertions on their behalf. He was, 
nevertheless, only there on sufferance ; to be tolerated 
in consideration of prospective usefulness, and treated 
from that point of view with a faint conciliatory show 
of shallow cordiality. He was as well behaved as the 
rest of the company, if his manners were not quite so 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN, 



233 



easy as theirs ; yet one felt vaguely that he was in, 
but not of, the ' world ' he aspired to frequent. 

The verses were read, and soon afterwards the 
influential editor left the room. A little stir of relief 
buzzed through the party ; but an old Hausfreund 
taking their host by the arm, led him apart. ' You 
have committed a mistake, lieber Frennd] he said. 
* Your wife may have talents, but in your place I 
would not allow her to have anything in common mit 
derer Art Lcitte (with that sort of people). They 
are only to be tolerated on account of their potential 
political usefulness.' Of course persons with a pedi- 
gree are blandly permitted in Germany, as 6 royal 
and noble authors ' elsewhere are, to dabble feebly in 
literature, and not to lose caste by the dabbling. It 
is a mania like another. But there is a general 
assumption in the world that is peopled by generals* 
wives and councillors' spouses that literary fame in a 
woman is, as Lord Macaulay says, ' a blemish, and a 
proof that the person who enjoys it is meanly born 
and out of the pale of good society.' 

A woman of declared ' literary ' propensities must 
accept the fate thrust, nolens vole?is, upon her, and sit 
patiently in that outer court of the Gentiles to which 
she is indiscriminately relegated together with Ar- 
cadians, Bohemians, boon companions, and inferior 
persons generally. It is, of course, out of the ques- 
tion that she should be a good Hattsfrau, or that what 
she has in the place of a mind can be given up to 
the minutiae of the storeroom and exigencies of the 
larder. The fiat has gone forth, and she must console 
herself with the thought that there is justice in heaven. 



234 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



In the present instance it will be observed that the 
lady was in no wise consulted as to her views or feel- 
ings on the matter, and it is to be hoped that the 
blank, expressive silence which fell upon the company 
on this unexpected revelation may, without the sug- 
gested marital coercion, have saved her from further 
follies of the kind. 

I have seen English gentlemen introduced, without 
due preparation, into strictly German circles made 
miserable for a whole evening, and finally driven to 
the verge of distraction, by the gentle, persistent at- 
tentions of the ladies of the house. When he realises 
that he is being waited upon by these fair damsels, 
the Englishman jumps wildly and apologetically from 
his chair, stammers out confused and bashful excuses, 
clutches the cups and platters out of the ministering 
angel's hand, and subsides, red and ruffled, into his 
seat. He hopes it will not happen again ; he devoutly 
trusts it is over. But no ; scarcely is his complexion 
recovering its normal hue when another lovely being 
is 'staying him with flagons, comforting him with 
apples, bringing him butter in a lordly dish,' or offering 
sausages at his shrine. Again he bounces out of his 
seat like an india-rubber ball, again clutches convul- 
sively, apologises, confounds himself in horrible 
polyglot inarticulate excuses, and subsides exhausted 
into his chair. He looks round and sees that all the 
other men are being waited upon ; he perceives that 
it is ' the custom of the country ; ' that it proceeds, 
not from the paucity of servants, but from a pleni- 
tude of female devotion. If servants were wanting, 
then surely the men would wait upon the ladies. 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN, 



235 



He tells himself severely that when at Rome your 
behaviour should be of the strictest Roman type ; 
he reminds himself that the first condition of good 
breeding is, that you should implicitly conform to 
the usages of the society in which you find your- 
self ; he will submit ; but when the third and most 
beautiful daughter of the house presents him with 
H firings alat, his feelings are altogether too much for 
him, and entirely overcome his good resolutions. He 
goes through the same frantic formula again, with the 
secret impression that he is making a most abject fool 
of himself, plunges wildly and despairingly at the 
comestibles, and subsides into a limp and melancholy 
condition. He is like a bull in a china-shop, the girls 
think, and they hold firmly to the family crockery 
and the best glass. ' They are dreadfully restless, die 
Englfinder] said a young cousin to me ; ■ see how- 
quiet and well-behaved our gentlemen are, and wait 
for their turn ! ' This was all the poor chivalrous 
young Briton got for his pains. Pains ! they were 
tortures, agonies. 

Elderly marriages are very rare in Germany, where 
a wholesome common-sense view of the relationship 
prevails, and designing elderly spinsters and dan- 
gerous elderly-juvenile bachelors are comparatively 
scarce in society. In Hungary Roman Catholics and 
members of the Greek Church may marry at almost 
any age — males over fourteen, females over twelve — 
whereas Protestants may not marry until the respec- 
tive ages of eighteen and fifteen. In Austria persons 
under twenty-four are minors, and must have the 
consent of parents to enter the marriage state. In 
Bavaria the laws vary considerably with the districts : 



236 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



in one the limit of valid marriage has been fixed at 
fourteen and twelve ; in another at eighteen and 
fourteen ; in a third at eighteen and fifteen. Soldiers 
are not allowed to marry under thirty years of age. 
In Hesse Darmstadt the law of 1852 required that 
every man should have reached the age of twenty- 
five before he ventured on the role of a Benedick; 
but in 1868 the rule was modified, and marriage 
became legal at twenty-one years of age. Even when 
the legal age is attained the consent of parents and 
guardians is indispensable. Runaway matches are, 
therefore, impossible, and much after misery is, no 
doubt, thus avoided ; but none the less, strange com- 
plications, not here to be entered upon, sometimes 
arise. 

Reference has already been made to the extra- 
ordinary apathy that prevails in matters sanitary 
throughout the Fatherland. The same obtuseness 
obtains with regard to all that concerns health, well- 
being, and happiness, if under happiness we include 
that first condition of the mens sana in corpore sano. 
Not only does the physical education of their women 
tend in the wrong direction, but all that influences and 
determines marriage confirms and adds to foregone 
blunders. 

In the upper classes marriage is determined, if not 
chiefly, yet perhaps decisively, by means. It is part 
of that peculiar prosaic, practical (and yet how fatally 
unpractical) programme which seems the law of the 
modern German nature — that money, if in a family, 
shall not be allowed to go out of it. Hence, both in 
the case of gold and lands, marriages and intermar- 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



237 



riages go on generation after generation, the relation- 
ships growing ever nearer and nearer, more and more 
confused, and the results, as may be readily imagined, 
ever more and more disastrous. In no other country 
does one meet with the same number of goitrous 
throats, scarred necks, spinal diseases, bad teeth, and 
generally defective bone-structure as in Germany. 

No hesitation is felt in speaking openly on matters 
that one might, without hypocrisy, be justified in 
hiding under any available bushel. 'Who is that; 
frightfully disfigured person ? * asked my neighbour, a 
brilliant young lieutenant of hussars, at a family 
dinner. ' Ich leide sehr an Skrofeln,' said the young- 
lady in question on the other side of me, speaking in 
the same level, unemotional tone that she might have 
used in asking me to pass the salt. Alas ! she had 
no need to tell the terrible tale ; but in a week, neither 
more nor less, she was engaged to the critical lieu- 
tenant (he was over head and ears in debt), who, 
though he had not been too delicate to sneer at her 
defects, was not slow to discover that the beaux yeux- 
de sa cassette made up for a want of eyelashes, and 
that sixty thousand Thaler covered a multitude of 
sins. 

In another family, where cousins had intermarried 
with cousins apparently since the Flood, the sole heir 
to a vast property was a delicate, spineless boy, a 
child whose bones had a cruel tendency to work 
through the skin, and so to slough away to the agony 
of the little sufferer. It Yv 7 as not possible that he 
should live, and when, after twelve years of terrible 
existence, death came and mercifully set him free at 



238 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



last, the childless father, looking round, picked out 
another cousin, took her to wife, and lived to have 
three more children, whereof two were grievously 
afflicted in mind and body, but the third, a hectic boy, 
survived to inherit the estate. 

In another family, where the estates were consider- 
able, and where the same immemorial marriage cus- 
toms between near relatives had obtained (uncles 
marry their nieces in Germany), the representatives at 
last dwindled down to five. The son and heir blew 
his brains out ; the second daughter drowned herself • 
the third daughter became a confirmed hypochondriac ; 
■the second son, tormented with a terrible complaint 
lFlechte\ akin to the leprosy of the ancients, after 
washing in all the waters that the wells of Germany 
.afforded, unable to find, even in religion and good 
works, the consolation he sought, put an end to his 
-miserable existence. Only the eldest daughter re- 
mained. The estates went in the male line, and 
devolved upon a distant cousin, a mere Namensvetter> 
•she said ; but the old feeling prevailed : it was a pity 
to take her fortune away from the name, and when 
the Namensvetter proposed he was accepted. I saw 
her some years later ; she was a widow with one idiot 
child. There seems to be a strange insensibility to all 
physical defects — to all the long train of terrible con- 
sequences which these grievous inherited maladies bring 
with them, where interested motives counsel a prudent 
shortness of sight. The geographical position of 
Germany has hitherto been a bar to any appreciable 
fusion of blood or mixture of races in her population ; 
the few French and English who find themselves 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



239 



settled in German towns are, for the most part, too 
poor to tempt the natives into matrimony (remember 
that Caution of fifteen thousand Thaler). 

In commercial towns, where there is more Verkehr> 
the money is chiefly in the hands of Jews ; and a 
German Jew is doubly bound to justify his origin. 
The money-bags will be kept in the family. Even in 
smaller towns and villages it is not the custom, as 
with us, for the young people to seek their fortune at 
a distance. Heimweh, the mal du pays of the Swiss, 
overcomes the wanderer who passes even into the next 
State (as from Devonshire into Cornwall), and a dozen 
droll remedies are prescribed by the old wives for this 
troublesome form of disease, under the influence of 
which the sufferer not unfrequently takes to her bed, 
and seeks solace in gnawing an old crust ( Weineknusi) 
which she has brought from the last loaf baked at 
home, and which is supposed to be an infallible remedy. 

The frightful goitres which one sees in the Tyrol, 
and which science attributes to drinking water that 
flows over dolomitic rocks, and ignorance lays at the 
door of snow-water, whilst the heavy weights the 
peasants carry on their heads are supposed by others 
to develope this hideous form of throat disease, 
are perhaps due not less to the fact of the goitrous 
marrying the goitrous, gazing upon the goitrous, and 
living in a goitrous atmosphere from time immemo- 
rial, than to any other remote causes assigned by 
science. It is no blemish or defect to eyes that are 
used to it ; the man or girl who leaves the village 
will return to settle there, and marry the lover left 
behind, and so the ghastly disease is perpetuated and 
general complacency prevails. 



240 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



The same may be said with regard to the awfully- 
afflicted cretins, who startle and horrify one in all 
these mountain villages. Where nature is so beautiful 
and grand the shock is almost unendurable when the 
eye falls on a row, say, of three or four of these 
blurred, deformed, and degraded specimens of hu- 
manity sitting ranged upon a wall, their gnome-like 
figures, ungainly limbs, and awfully imbecile counte- 
nances striking dismay into your very soul. Deficient 
as they are in understanding, they yet know how to 
beg, and will slip down from the wall with a weird 
agility for which you had not given them credit, and 
come clamouring round the carriage with hideous 
gibberings and ghastly inarticulate utterances. The 
first time such a sight presented itself to me I 
turned away with a sense of sickening disgust. 
' Fie ! ' said a pretty German friend ; ■ have they 
not as much right to God's dear sunshine as we? 5 
The words were so gentle that for a moment I felt 
abashed ; but the next common sense rejected the 
soft optimism. It was false sentiment after all, for 
the unhappy, loathly creatures could have enjoyed 
' God's dear sunshine ' just as well where they would 
not have outraged that reverence for the image of the 
Maker which causes us all instinctively to turn away 
from an animal out of which the God-like, the Divine, 
has so awfully and so mysteriously disappeared. It 
seemed to me that the police, who were employed in 
coercing us as to our Passe and Scheine, would have 
been far better and more practically engaged if they 
had taken the helpless, hideous gang of moppers and 
mowers under their charge, and conducted them to 
a place of safety remote from the king's highway. 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



241 



But such afflicted beings are a source of considerable 
income to their parents and guardians. A hasty im- 
pulse causes the traveller to plunge his hand into his 
pocket for coin : a false benevolence, a sense of the 
awful infinite chasm between them and their surround- 
ings, makes his strength and health and wandering so 
many reproaches to him ; again, the desire to get rid 
of this awful blot on so fair a creation, an uneasiness 
at their very presence, produces willing specie from 
the depth of his garments ; unless, indeed, he be of 
the placid frame of my pretty Bertha, who wished 
them to enjoy ' God's dear sunshine,' but did not 
further that inexpensive entertainment by any reck- 
less profusion of coin. 

Nor is it remarkable (though science disputes the 
influence of such painful phenomena on coming gene- 
rations) that, with the sight of these poor afflicted 
beings ever before their eyes, and the knowledge that 
they are fertile sources of gain to their families, the 
inhabitants of these regions are equal to the occa- 
sion, and that the race does not die out nor the supply 
fail. 

Let us return to the sheepfold of ordinary home 

life. 

After a year's matrimony comes the customary 
baby. 

; A German baby is a piteous object ; it is pinioned 
and bound up, like a mummy, in yards of bandages, 
which are unfolded once (at the outside twice) a day ; 
it is never ' bathed/ but I suppose is sometimes washed 
after some occult manner. Its head is never touched 
with soap and water until it is eight or ten months 

R 



242 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



old, when the thick skull-cap of encrusted dirt that it 
has by that time obtained is removed by the applica- 
tion of various unguents. 

Many German ladies have assured me that the 
fine heads of hair one sees in Germany are entirely 
owing to this unsavoury skull-cap. When, having 
some juvenile relatives staying with me, I insisted on 
their being 1 tubbed,' all my female friends were 
shocked at my ignorance and wilfulness, and assured 
me that it was entirely owing to our barbaric bath- 
system that the King of Hanover had lost his sight. 
i My friends, we are not all blind/ I said ; and then 
they were silenced, if not convinced. 

To this terrible system of bandaging and carrying 
the child in a peculiar fashion wrapped in a mantle, 
that is partly slung round the hips of the bearer, 
something after the fashion prevailing amongst Indian 
squaws, may be attributed in a great degree the 
number of curved spines, crooked shoulders, and ab- 
normal developments we meet with in Germany. Yet, 
strange to say, 'rickets/ a disease only knowm with us 
amongst the poor, who cannot afford the time them- 
selves or pay others to nurse their children properly, 
goes by the name of Englische Krankheit. 

The baby being born and swathed up, now gets a 
huge peasant girl in loco parentis. A mummy is not 
a thing to fondle, nor is a little stiff bundle of 
humanity (which you might stand up on end in the 
corner of the room without detriment to its sump- 
tuary arrangements) an object on which to lavish 
caresses. 

Thus the young mother is scarcely a mother at 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



243 



all, the maternal functions being delegated to another. 
The baby does not lie on the floor or crawl to the 
hearth-rug, crowing and kicking and curling its pink 
toes, trampling with its chubby legs, and fighting 
with its mottled arms, ' as one that beateth the air.* 
It does not swarm up and about its mother's neck 
and bosom, finding its little life and all its tiny 
pleasures in her arms ; it does not fall at length into 
a slumber of rosy repletion, and with its mouth open, 
snoosily satisfied, rejoice its mother's eyes for the 
beautiful little animal that it is. 

No, it is out walking, tied to a feather bed^ and 
accompanied by a tall soldier, the father of its poor 
little foster brother or sister, which is to grow up as 
it can. It comes in presently and is taken to its 
mamma to kiss ; but its real mother, the mother that 
fosters and feeds it, soon carries it away again, and 
resumes all the privileges of true maternity for the 
rest of the day. The lady might as well be its aunt 
— ' only that, and nothing more.' 

We have already glanced at the lives of the little 
men and women that we have seen trotting to and 
fro between home and school. The charming institu- 
tion of a ' nursery,' as we understand it, is scarcely 
known in Germany ; certainly only known in the 
houses of the very rich. The children eat and drink 
in the common Wohnstube, and swarm generally over 
the premises in their hours of freedom. There will, 
perhaps, be a dull and dismal apartment, called the 
Kinderstube, whither the stalwart A mme will retire to 
dangle-cub the last hope of the Katzekopfs ; but all 
the comfortable nursery arrangements so dear to the 



244 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



heart of the British matron, the unflinching tubbings 
and -flcrubbings, and systematic, undeviating regularity 
of all that can contribute to the comfort and cleanli- 
ness of child-life, are not to be thought of. 

To the ordinary English mind the idea of the 
Hausmutter is such as the charming German wood 
engravings so pleasantly convey. It is in this humble 
domestic attitude that the poets and painters of the 
Fatherland have sent her out into the world ; as 
Schiller has represented her sitting amidst her sturdy 
K nab en und Madchen, spinning and winning, filling 
and willing, with presses o'erflowing and stores ever- 
growing ; the house-mother, a humble Western replica 
of Solomon's great Oriental picture. It is very right 
and wise that she should be thus depicted. The 
artistic spirit has seized the quaint homeliness, the 
pleasant busy-ness, the simple poetry, and wholesome 
prose of her existence. But who knows anything of 
the middle or upper class mothers of Germany ? We 
have glanced in pity rather than in blame at the in- 
ability of most mothers to undertake the primary 
duty of maternity ; but are not the duties which, 
instead of lasting over a few months, extend over 
long years, patiently and punctually performed by 
them ? I have often gazed with wistful eyes at the 
plain, plodding, pathetic patience of such mothers. 
Maternal pelicans prevail largely all over the world jj 
but the German mother does not only pluck the 
feathers from her breast, and stand an emblem of 
bleeding maternal piety before us. She does more. 
She — I know no other phrase that expresses what I 
mean — she 'effaces' herself. 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



245 



She loses vanity, self-care, and all feminine weak- 
nesses for the sake of her offspring. The money 
saved does not go to buy her delicate laces wherewith 
to soften the cruel lines that time has drawn about 
her neck and brows ; it is spent in fresh bail-dresses 
for her girls. No charming elderly coquetries make 
her picturesque or graceful. Bertha and Jertha want 
new hats ; her gown is ill cut, her shoes are appalling, 
her trimmings are disastrous ; she is altogether dowdy, 
dingy, and ' common'-looking, for the young people 
must have their day, and the General's temper is so 
short, she dare not ask him for more money ; and, as 
for her, what does it matter ? Who will look at her or 
care what she wears ? And in the same enduring 
mood she sits in ungraceful garments long hours at 
balls, or tramps after her offspring at picnics, bound 
ever to keep the betrothed vigilantly in her eye, 
knowing no rest and expecting no thanks. Indeed, 
it is this simple, unconscious unselfishness that gives 
her a glory not otherwise her own, and makes one's 
heart warm towards her plain, hard face. 

Such persevering, scrupulous economy commands 
our respect and admiration. A loving wife will bear 
her part cheerfully so long as the heat and burden 
of the day be equally borne. No true woman will 
lament over the dinner of herbs so long as the love 
be there. But where the sacrifices are all on one side, 
and the indulgences all on the other ; when the man 
presents a splendid front to the world, and the woman 
drudges away her days in sordid details, the spectator 
is apt to be wroth at the injustice of her situation, 
and to let his indignation vex him as a thing that is 



246 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



raw. For the country that invented the Ewigweib- 
liche this narrow view of ' woman's sphere ' is, to say 
the least of it, a little paltry ; and the Quixotic spec- 
tator would prefer less magniloquent words, and more 
liberal deeds in the place of them. 

It has been made a matter of reproach to German 
women that they are, outside of their own personal 
affairs, incapable of enthusiasm. That they are 
capable of little ejaculatory shrieks and spasmodic 
adjectives is conceded, and how should more be ex- 
pected or required of them ? Ground down by sordid 
details, living as though perennial war-prices were 
an unalterable condition of things, inspired by that 
dreary ' carefulness about many things ' that seems to 
her the normal law of her being, how should the op- 
pressed Hausfrau be very enthusiastic on large out- 
side questions ? And when you add famine prices to 
those of war, increased and ever-increasing taxation, 
higher house-rent, nipping economies, is it any wonder 
if the iron of the res angusta domi enters into her 
soul, causing it to cleave to the dust, and her body to 
the ground ? Every item of household expenditure 
is reckoned by the husband at its minimum cost, and 
no margin is left for the little feminine fleshly weak- 
nesses in the matter of humble charities or modest 
finery. He knows so well the cost of everything, 
reckoning it at its cheapest, that she cannot (despite her 
culinary abilities) 'cook' her little household accounts. 
Is this a state of things likely to take a woman out of 
herself, and make her enthusiastic for the glory of 
the Fatherland ? She has given uncomplainingly her 
husband, her sons, her brothers ; and she has her 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



247 



reward in a united Germany, in gaps in the family 
circle and black gowns on the family clothes-pegs. 
She trembles at wars and rumours of wars ; what is 
material in her shrinks from further and crueller 
economies ; what is spiritual in her shudders at the 
thought of fresh sacrifice, and weeps — weeps tears of 
blood, it may be, remembering past bereavements. 

Yet, should you venture to let your pity become 
vocal, she will fly at your throat, true woman as she 
is, hug her chains the tighter, and call upon you 
loudly to witness the rapture of those huggings. 
You will be in the usual enviable position of the un- 
wary sympathiser who enters into matrimonial differ- 
ences. The couple will reappear shortly enlaced 
lovingly in intertwining arms, and politely ignore 
your existence. Such is gratitude ; but I, who love 
those gentle German ladies, will not heed their cold 
looks, if my words may haply, against their will, do 
them service. ' Entre l'arbre et Tecorce ne mettez 
pas le doigt.' A better state of things can only be 
brought about by German men. German women can 
and will do nothing for themselves. But the stronger 
sex should remember that if they are also the 
* superior/ it is only because they have from their 
youth up enjoyed superior advantages ; that the real 
civilisation of a country may be estimated by the 
deference and tenderness shown to its women ; that 
marriage means something more than a commercial 
arrangement and increased creature comforts, and 
that a firm and manly hand may lift, if it will, the 
meek and feeble and apparently insignificant wife to 
a noble equality at the husband's side. The change 



248 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



must come about by concession, not by rebellion. 
A generous, cheerful, heartfelt encouragement must 
animate the words that shall exhort the woman to 
more independent action, and spur her on to a wider 
grasp of life and more liberal views than have 
hitherto been hers. The man only can — 

c on Germania's mighty forehead place 
The absent touch of glory and of grace.' 

And indeed this branch of my subject cannot be 
more fitly closed than by a few lines from that ' Ode 
to the Teuton Women' whereof a verse already stands 
on the title-page of this volume : — 

6 Meek Teuton Woman, thou hast borne too long 
The chain to know its weight or own its wrong. 
And lov'st it for those reliquary flowers 
Which dropt from off it in the early hours. 
* * * * * # * 

' It is not that your women voices fail 
From out the chorus that the nations hail, 
Or that the wavering notes they dare to raise 
Are sometimes false for lack of heartening praise. 

1 It is that by the hearth the woman 1 s share 
Ft man is but a partnership of care, 
Which leaves her standing with ha' pinions furled 
Upon the threshold of his higher world. 

* It is that by her lord she still is thrust 
A pining Cinderella in the dust 
Of household toil, while on his spirits fall 
The magic and the music of the ball. ' 

# -*'. : --••*' a : /M 

German physicians will tell you, with jeremiads 
prolonged and sonorous, that the women of their 
country — the women of the upper classes, that is— 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



249 



are totally unfitted for the fatigues and duties of ma- 
ternity. By inheritance, by education, by prejudice, 
by continued intermarriages, by defective diet, poor 
nourishment, horror of exercise, hatred of fresh air 
and cold water, the German lady has persistently ener- 
vated herself from generation to generation. ' Look 
at our prettiest girls,' cried an eminent physician to 
me ; ' they are like those flowers that bloom their 
brief hour, fade, and fall, to make room for fresh 
blossoms, who, in turn, will bloom, fade, and fall 
also. They are all blcichsiichtig ; they cannot fulfil 
the functions that nature intended every mothershould 
fulfil — not one here or there, but all ; they have no 
constitution, no stamina, no nerve, no physique, no 
race! The type is indistinct and blurred, marred by 
certain constitutional defects that you point out to 
them in vain ; there is a want of lime deposit in the 
bone system, hence the terrible teeth that mark a 
German woman's nationality nine times out of ten. 
How can they have ' pluck ' and nerve, and sound 
firm flesh, strong muscle, and healthy bone, if they have 
no fresh air, no regular exercise, no proper nourish- 
ment, and, above all, no desire to change, alter, or 
amend the order of their unhealthy lives ? For with 
them the question of reform in matters hygienic 
principally lies ; but they turn a deaf ear to warning, 
think they are more comfortable as they are, and 
don't disguise the impatience they feel at our pro- 
fessional pratings. 

' But perhaps it doesn't matter so very much, 
apart from individual comfort ; for look at your men, 
what a stalwart race they are/ 



250 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



' That is true ; the man's education helps him 
over the stumbling-block of inherited maladies ; he 
nourishes himself well, lives in the open air, and 
assimilates his food. For the rest, a man's neck and 
shoulders are not bared ; and if he loses his teeth, 
provident nature hides the gaps by an opportune 
moustache. ' No ! ' cried the hopeless reformer ; ■ if 
ever reform be feasible, it will be feasible only through 
German women themselves, and no German woman 
will ever see it, and to no other woman would they 
for a moment consent to listen ! ' 

I shall be asked, Are German women never pretty, 
then ? 

German girls are often charmingly pretty, with 
dazzling complexions, abundant beautiful hair, and 
clear, lovely eyes ; but the splendid matron, the sound, 
healthy, well-developed woman, who has lost no grain 
of beauty and yet gained a certain magnificent matu- 
rity, such as we in England see daily, with daughters 
who might well be her younger sisters — of such women 
the Fatherland has few specimens to show. 

The ' pale, unripened beauties of the North' do 
not ripen ; they fade. 'The style is the man,' says 
Buffon ; and what style is to literature, taste to dress, 
and refinement to manners, distinction is to beauty. 
There must be a certain line, certain proportions, a 
healthy development, a harmony, grace and strength, 
before we can acknowledge that a greater than the 
mere passing prettiness of youth, freshness, and good 
looks is there. 

Polish, Hungarian, and Austrian women, whom 
we in a general, inconclusive way are apt to class 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



25 r 



as Germans, are * beautiful exceedingly but here we 
come upon another race, or rather such a fusion of 
other races as may help to contribute to the charming 
result. Polish ladies have a special, vivid, delicate, 
spirited, haunting loveliness, with grace, distinction,, 
and elegance in their limbs and features that is all 
their own ; you cannot call them fragile, but they are 
of so fine a fibre, and so delicate a colouring, that 
they only just escape that apprehension. Of Polish 
and Hungarian pur sang there is little to be found; 
women of the latter race are of a more robust and 
substantial build, with dark hair and complexion, fine 
flashing eyes, and pronounced type ; and who that 
remembers the women of Linz and Vienna will refuse 
them a first prize ? They possess a special beauty of 
their own, a beauty which is rare in even the loveliest 
Englishwoman ; rare, indeed, and exceptional every- 
where else ; a beauty that the artist eye appreciates 
with a feeling of delight. They have the most deli- 
cately articulated joints of any women in the world. 
The juncture of the hand and wrist, of foot and 
ankle, of the nuque with the back and shoulders, is 
what our neighbours would call ' adorable/ But alas 
that it should be so ! The full, gracious figures — types 
at once of strength and elegance — the supple, slender 
waists, the dainty little wrists and hands, become all 
too soon hopelessly fat, from the persistent idleness 
and luxury of the nerveless, unoccupied lives of these 
graceful ladies. 

But marriage, interesting as it may be from a per- 
sonal point of view, means more than this. It means > 
from the politico-economical standpoint, population, 



252 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and, Malthus notwithstanding, within certain limits, 
national prosperity. We have seen the lets and hin- 
drances, the just causes and impediments, that make 
marriage in Germany a matter of difficulty ; these 
are so manifold and multiform that it has become a 
jesting habit of speech to say, before the knot can be 
tied, a man must produce not only his baptism and 
confirmation Sckeine, but vaccination, chicken-pox, 
nettle-rash, and every other sort of certificate, to prove 
that he has passed through those unavoidable forms 
of infantile suffering to which even the sturdy Ger- 
man flesh is heir. In fact, the restrictions laid upon 
the holy estate are as numerous as though it were a 
state of vice rather than a state of virtue. 

The latest statistics tell us that marriage, which 
is reckoned at thirty-nine per cent, in England, and 
at thirty per cent, in Ireland, only reaches nineteen 
per cent, in Germany, and some uneasiness is felt in 
the Fatherland at the manifest signs of a decreasing 
population. 

The subject is one to claim the gravest considera- 
tion of her busy legislators. The hatred of com- 
pulsory conscription, a hatred which the late wars 
have now and again fanned almost into frenzy, pro- 
duces a serious efflux of population. Hans Michel 
turns restive, escapes to convenient neutral ground, 
evades conscription, and in America or Australia is 
free to marry, to become a house-father and prospe- 
rous citizen. 

From the three German ports of Hamburgh, 
Bremen, and Stettin during the year 1873, 134,191 
persons embarked ; in 1874 the number of emigrants 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



253 



fell to 75,502, and in 1875 there was a still greater 
reduction, as only 56,289 were registered. 

The returns of the last census show that, in 
Prussia proper, the decrease of population is little 
short of alarming. Between 1861-64 there was an 
increase of 8,409 ; but between 1 864-67 there was a 
decrease of 12,922, and between 1867-71 of 56,440. 
Allowing for the loss of life in the last two wars, and 
for the Prussian soldiers quartered in France at the 
time of the census, the loss of population in ten years 
amounts to 52,000. And as these figures are derived 
from authentic German sources, it is only fair to pre- 
sume that they are approximately correct. 1 

After witnessing the obstructive regulations re- 
stricting persons from entering upon the married state, 
a certain blank wonder falls on the mind of the out- 
sider when he recognises, on the other hand, the fact 
that the knot, so difficult to tie, can be loosed with 
extraordinary ease. In some districts the most as- 
tounding laxity exists on this point. Marriage may 
be said to be a mere legalised temporary arrangement, 
where every facility is given to divorce. 

Mutual dislike, family quarrels, almost any trivial 
pretext, is admitted by the Prussian law as sufficient 
cause for the dissolution of matrimony. For instance, 
par. 57 of the E hep client, which is still in use in 
Prussia, says — ■ 

1 Since the above was written it is stated that the uncorrected re* 
turns of the new census show a slight increase (but an increase, it must 
be remembered, on an enormous decrease) of population in almost 
every part of the new Empire, if we except Metz, which has lost 
10,000 inhabitants since the annexation. It is quite impossible that 
Elsass and Lothringen can be up to their former mark. 



254 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



- Thirdly, we do permit a severance of the conjugal tie when between the 
wedded parties a rooted enmity doth exist (Hauptfeindschaft), or if an in- 
superable dislike (uniibenvindliche Abneigung) shall have arisen and 
both parties demand divorce. ' 

The pastor of the parish, as a mere formality, ad- 
monishes such couples that they must agree ; the 
'ecclesiastical court does the same ; the one or the 
other, or both, remain obdurate (unversohnlicJi), and in 
due course the marriage is dissolved. In the case of 
* one or the other party ' opposing the separation out 
of ' malice prepense/ the court reserves to itself the 
right to grant the application, in spite of the opposing 
party, provided it find the petition ' billig* (just). 

The bonds that required fifteen thousand Thaler 
before they could be recognised as authentic, the 
chains that called for such assiduity in forging, are 
slipped with the calmest and most careless ease, 
should any motive sufficiently strong arise to suggest 
the desirability of such slippings. There need be 
nothing very scandalous or exceptional in the case. 
Alexander unsheaths his sword ; ' Our tempers are 
incompatible/ he says ; a swirl, a swing, and a slash, 
and the Gordian knot is severed. Adelheid discovers 
an elective affinity with the sympathetic soul of her 
husband's Jugendfreund, whose manners and mous- 
tache are more congenial to her fastidious sensibilities 
than those of her lawful spouse. 1 Bring the fateful 
scissors/ she sighs faintly to the three old imme- 
morial ladies in waiting. Snip, snap — the uncongenial 
bonds are severed in a second ! The matter creates 
gossip, or rather confirms it, but can scarcely be said 
to provoke scandal ; it is less than a nine days' 
wonder — indeed, it is no wonder at all — and a lenient 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



255 



society prudently abstains from judgment. It is said 
that divorce is nowadays looked at askance from high 
places, the official tone of the Prussian Court being 
ostentatiously correct on matters domestic (witness the 
now historic ' Dear Augusta ' telegrams of sanguinary 
memory) ; but the elasticity of German views on such 
points is not likely to be materially affected by a 
stern masquerade in the interests of morality, and 
socially the parties concerned suffer no injury what- 
ever. 

We have glanced in a former chapter at the extra- 
ordinary license that illustrates German society of an 
earlier epoch. The histories and biographies of that 
and subsequent times are filled with unedifying ex- 
amples ; we see a King of Prussia with four ' legal ' 
spouses, a preposterous formula of approbation and 
consent being wrung from each retiring lady in turn. 
Royal and Serene persons present a no more dignified 
aspect in matters matrimonial than the courtiers, 
statesmen, and whole cluster of irritable geniuses by 
whom they are surrounded. The husband faithful to 
one wife, and the wife faithful to one husband, are 
the exceptions, not the rule ; no scruple was felt by 
an ' incompatible ' pair in speaking freely of the de- 
sirability of a dissolution of partnership. Why they 
should have gone through successive marriage cere- 
monies is the chief mystery ; but the honourable 
thing was to confide your penchant to the wife or 
liusband of your bosom, receive his or her confidence 
in return, exchange benisons, and go on the flowery 
way of freedom rejoicing. The mark of such morals 
is stamped plainly on the very front of German 



256 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



society. The matter is generally felt to be one that 
concerns only the chief actors in it. You do not 
meddle when a man buys a house, lets a farm, changes 
his banker, or dissolves partnership ; a sociable ac- 
ceptance of accomplished facts, an abstention from 
any unnecessarily severe criticism, a stretching out of 
the elastic mantle of charity, which covereth a multi- 
tude of sins, is supposed to be the appropriate tone. 
Any other would savour of surperfluous and malignant 
hypocrisy. You are not to judge, lest your turn come 
to be judged also ; be cautious how you throw the 
invidious stone ; besides, why disturb the merriment 
in hall, and dash the general beard-waggings, by your 
stilted niceties of objection ? Toleration is our first 
duty to our neighbour, and to afficher such super- 
squeamishness is simply to sin against good-fellow- 
ship. The mantle of Cato has fallen in vain on your 
censorious shoulders, and ' private judgment' cannot 
be allowed to meddle with private matters. 

To persons who have lived long in Germany the 
examples of spouses who have dissolved their union, 
and after years of estrangement have been remarried, 
cannot be altogether unfamiliar. The writer remem- 
bers a case of two brothers marrying two sisters (they 
were from the German provinces of Russia), changing 
partners., and on death removing one of the husbands 
and one of the wives, the original pair (now widowed) 
were for the second time united in the holy bonds 
of matrimony. It is quite true that the case was ex- 
ceptional, but it was told with infinite cackling delight 
and amusement by an admiring circle of indulgent 
friends. 



MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN. 



257 



In the family of the writer a great-uncle seemed 
to have reached the acme of skilled practice in this 
matter of the dissolution of matrimony. He sat 
down every evening of his life to play a rubber of 
whist with his three divorced wives ; they ' cut for 
partners, shuffled, and talked of tricks and honours ' 
with all the gay philosophy of folks for whom words 
had no meaning and facts no moral. No one bore 
animosity to anybody else ; the three ladies had all 
tried their hand at it, but they had held bad cards ; 
the luck was against them, and they each successively 
threw up the game and awoke to the conviction that 
their terrible old general (he was a Waterloo man) 
was much more practicable as a partner at the card- 
table than as a companion for life. It was merely a 
matter of mutual accommodation ; there was no ill- 
will and no resentment ; the arrangement was con- 
ducted in the most business-like and least emotional 
manner imaginable, and the result proved to be emi- 
nently satisfactory to all parties. 

The subject of marriage cannot be dismissed 
without a brief glance at that supreme sham called 
the ' morganatic ' marriage — a miserable, shuffling 
compromise, supposed to have been invented for the 
preservation of youthful royalties from matrimonial 
indiscretions. Nine times out of ten a morganatic 
marriage means the left-handed infatuation of a 
grand duke for a ballet-dancer, but not always ; and 
the English mind is apt to feel intense disgust when 
an English duke's daughter marries a small Serenity, 
and is not allowed to go to Court in her husband's 
name. Nor can we admire the position when a 

S 



2 5 8 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



remote prince of the blood, marrying a lady of most 
ancient lineage, brings the 'bar sinister' into the 
coat of arms of his children. No matter that the 
mother was noble; she ought to have been royal. 
Fidelity, purity, and truth avail nothing ; her children 
cannot inherit their father's styles and titles ; other 
titles and styles must be invented for them. Accord- 
ing to the gospel of heralds' offices, and the jargon 
of ceremonials, they are not officially recognisable. 
Neither is it a very pleasant spectacle when a poor 
young princelet, insignificant among insignificancies, 
marrying modestly, with his only available hand, the 
maiden of his choice, is snatched from the hearth 
that was bright, and the home that was vocal with 
shrill piping trebles, to give the legal dexter palm to 
the princess whom fate imposes on his obscure royalty. 
The sinister union is at an end ; it is in vain that the 
illegal left hand is bedewed with loving faithful tears 
and clasped with close-clinging kisses ; he waves it in 
the wild despair of final farewell, and the curtain 
falls on the poor little domestic drama, to rise on one 
where only right hands count and hearts are not 
included in the bargain. 

[Several passages in Chapters VIII. and X. have been reprinted, 
by the kind permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., from an 
article on ' Female Education' in the Comhill Magazine.] 



RELIGION. 259 



CHAPTER XL 

RELIGION. 

* The first condition of human goodness is something to love ; the 
second, something to reverence.' — George Eliot. 

'A MAN'S religion/ says Mr. Carlyle, 'is the chief 
fact with regard to him — a man's or a nation of 
men's ; ' and he goes on to add that he does not 
thereby mean the thing the man outwardly professes, 
but the thing which ' he practically lays to heart! 
The cycle of German home life can scarcely be con- 
sidered complete without some reference to that ' chief 
fact ' with regard to all life — religion. 

And firstly, to speak of the social aspects of 
German Protestantism, we may say at once that the 
Protestant religion in Germany is a dead letter ; dust 
and dry bones ; a State name for an effete institution, 
which has not vitality enough to fight its own battles, 
and which, before long, must die the final death. It 
is without any material influence on the masses of 
the people ; it excites the pity of the gentle and the 
scorn of the profane. Originally an elastic quantity, 
it has stretched beyond the power of contraction. 
Neither Evangelical congresses nor Protestant synods 
can consolidate it. The very links that bound it to the 
things ' protested against ' are broken. It has ceased 
to have any distinctive entity of its own ; it has had 

s 2 



260 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



its day, and that day is done. (To speak the simple 
truth plainly, the Christianity of to-day, call it by 
what name you will, is inodorous in the nostrils of the 
enlightened German ; it is to him what primitive 
Christianity was to the ancient Jews — a stumbling- 
block ; what it was to the intellectual Greeks — 
foolishness. He himself uses no hypocrisy on this 
point, nor does he desire that any should be used on 
his account. Hypocrisy is not the tribute that Reason 
should pay to Faith. It behoves Reason to speak 
out boldly and not to be ashamed. Let her light 
shine abroad and illumine the world, making dark 
places clear. He broadly divides ' believers ' into 
two groups, and leaves you to take your choice. 
There is the man who believes through Naivetat (the 
simple, feeble, unthinking, uncultured man, that is) ; 
and there is the hypocrite, who uses religion as a sort 
of social cloak to his own private ends — the garment 
of respectability, the staff of the smug Philistine, 
the broken reed of the feeble-minded. You must 
take your choice btween knavery and foolery. Of sin- 
cerity, enthusiasm, or conviction your friend admits 
no possibility ; he waves you aside with the calm, 
pitying smile of a philosophy hitherto undreamt of 
by you. You feel that the argument is at an end, and 
that you have been presumptuous. Yours is an igno- 
rant worship. Milk is for babes, and strong meat for 
men. Go home and read Kant, and Fichte, and Schel- 
ling, and Hegel, and Schopenhauer, and rise up and say 
your grace, and be thankful for the larger satisfaction 
that has come to your soul. 

It requires some courage nowadays for a man or 



RELIGION. 



261 



woman to confess in Germany that he or she * prac- 
tically lays to heart ' the things of Christianity. To 
do so is to confess mental inferiority, perhaps even 
to provoke the charge of snuffling hypocrisy, for the 
(so-called) professors of which derision has invented 
the terms Mucker and Pietist. 

That such a state of things is not a matter of 
opinion ('for which let whoso will worry and be 
worried '), but a matter of fact, the writer is presently 
prepared to prove. That there are both men and 
women of sincere religious convictions in Germany is 
not to be denied. They form a small, an almost 
infinitesimally small (if respectable), minority, and can 
scarcely be said to weigh in the balance. 

For the present, avoiding anything like theology 
or dogma, we will confine ourselves to the consi- 
deration of the more superficial aspects of German 
Protestantism. 

When the Protestant Inquisition was instituted 
(to fill up a blank in the political game) at Berlin, 
great Protestant meetings were held in London, 
and Evangelical deputations scampered with Bibles 
to Berlin, to lay them at the feet of Prince Bismarck. 
Prince Bismarck, having seen many curious things in 
the course of his career, was duly grateful for the 
Bibles and diplomatically courteous in his utter- 
ances. The German newspapers knew better than to 
turn the thing into ridicule ; private opinion exploded 
in harmless laughter behind closed doors — 'The sim- 
plicity of these English ! the folly of them, and their 
enthusiasms and beliefs ! ' Nevertheless, as it suited 
Berlin at the moment to irritate the Vatican, let the 



262 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



obsolete books be accepted without any outward or 
visible sign of the inward, infinite laughter which the 
* well-meant offering ' had provoked. 

To those energetic members of the Evangelical 
Alliance who first rushed to public halls in London 
to register their admiration of Prince Bismarck's 
ecclesiastical polity, and then in a fervour of fussiness 
flung themselves into express trains that their bless- 
ings might become vocal in Berlin, the real bearing 
of the Falk laws, the true significance of what was 
being enacted, was a dead letter. They only saw in 
the excitement that prevailed a vast Protestant de- 
monstration, whereas the political side of the matter 
was what chiefly occupied the legislators of the 
Empire. How little ' religion ' has profited by those 
laws our 'Evangelical' friends may gather from the fact 
that when the Falk laws were passed civil marriage 
and civil registry, except in the Rhine province, 
had not been introduced into Prussia. The Church 
was still the sole agent with regard to the three most 
important events in every man's or woman's life — 
namely, birth, marriage, and death. Now civil 
marriage and civil registry are legal throughout the 
country ; the lower classes everywhere avail them- 
selves largely of the license thus offered them, and 
so another of the moorings between the Church and 
the people is cut away. 

Now, it is the distinctive feature of the English 
'Evangelical' (party names are offensive, but we use 
the term for purposes of classification) that he only 
believes in the efficacy of prayers and preachments on 
the ' Sabbath,' as he still persists in calling the first 



RELIGION, 



263 



day of the week. He puts all his religion into one day ; 
and to the ordinary weaker sort of flesh this concentra- 
tion of piety is somewhat grievous. You must not read 
anything lighter than a tract ; you must not write 
letters ; you may not walk with your friends talking 
pleasant, pure, profane talk by the way ; gay, innocent 
laughter must not re-echo from your garden, though 
only a happy family group be sitting there, and little 
children dominate the scene. What would the gentle- 
men of the Evangelical Alliance say if they could 
see the Sunday * recreations of a (German) country 
parson' ? or, for that matter, of a town parson either? 
His servants are at their Tanzkrcinzchen, his daughters 
at a coffee party, his sons gone to see a great 
Volkstiick at the theatre. Sunday was the day 
that the ex-King of Hanover always chose for giving 
his Court balls (it is taut soit pea bourgeois to go 
to the theatre on Sunday), and the late British 
Minister applied to Lord Palmerston to know what 
he could, should, or might do, as it troubled his 
conscience to appear at these frivolous festivities. 
He had hitherto, he said, compromised matters, and 
diplomatically reconciled the claims of this world 
with those of the next by putting in a mere passing 
appearance at the King's balls, and retiring almost 
immediately. Lord Palmerston counselled him to 
continue the ingenious compromise. The thing got 
wind, and was received with shouts of laughter. The 
conscientious diplomate was set down as a tartufe. 
King George was always looked upon as a deeply 
religious monarch. His enemies called him a Pietist. 
There is no difference between a German Catholic 



264 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



and a German Protestant Sunday except this : — The 
Protestant rarely puts foot inside a church, while the 
Catholic begins the day with some show of respect 
for his religion. The Protestant systematically ignores 
religion altogether, and simply regards the day with 
favour because it allows a wider margin for secular 
satisfactions — for more beer and more skittles, jaunt- 
ings farther afield, beer-gardening, theatre-going, and 
booth-dancing generally. Many of my readers will 
say this is not to be condemned ; neither do I con- 
demn it. My metier is to register facts, not to record 
opinions. Only such facts as these, were they but 
generally known, might possibly tend to temper that 
Evangelical enthusiasm which went so far out of its 
way to let the light of its countenance shine on the 
pseudo-Prusso-Protestantism of Berlin. 

The first thing that shocks the reverent English 
ear in German social circles is the continual use or 
abuse of sacred names. Persons who would not for 
a moment suffer you to speak of God seriously, take 
His name in vain on every trivial occasion. The 
free-thinker, through the illogical tyranny of habit, 
breaks the third commandment quite as frequently as 
(but not more frequently than) his professed Protest- 
ant companion. He invokes the God in whom he 
does not believe, after the most unphilosophic, as his 
friend does after the most irreverent, fashion, neither, 
from the force of custom, knowing what he does. In 
the families of the clergy no less than in those of the 
laity the most trivial circumstance, the least worthy 
conduct, the most insignificant domesticities, cannot 
be spoken of without appeals to the Almighty. 



RELIGION. 



265 



1 Herr Jesus ! Du hast Dich aber schon gemacht ! ' 
cries one pastors daughter to another under the nose 
of her reverend father. ' Du lieber Gott ! was bin ich 
erschopft ! 1 exclaims the Frau Mama, and sinks 
panting on a bench. ' Allmachtiger ! ! ' cries a lady, 
clasping her hands together over the last coffee 
scandal. ' Du lieber Himmel ! ' answers a friend of 
more elastic views ; ' Du brauchst Dich janicht so shreck- 
lich dariiber zu sc andalisiren ! ' i Grosser Gott ! ' cries the 
hostess in a tone of agony ; ' denkt Euch, Kinder, ich 

habe vergessen die Generalinn L einzuladen!' 

and so on with profane -variations ad infinitum. 

It is true that in the higher grades of society your 
ears will be less frequently offended by this incessantly 
recurring abuse of sacred names. As the use of 
oaths and expletives has passed away from amongst 
us, so in Germany persons of breeding avoid in this 
respect the ' vulgar tongue ' of their inferiors. It is 
* bad form ' to appeal to the Almighty in every second 
sentence, and to call upon the ' heavenly powers,' to 
confirm your asseverations ; and thus culture, of a 
certain kind, supplies the'want of reverence. 

I do not think that any Englishman, however 
heathen his haunts or heterodox his opinions, could 
possibly contrive to pass seven years in his own 
country without once meeting a clergyman in society. 
We are, perhaps, on the whole, rather overdone with 
theology in these controversial days ; but we do not 
feel that we can justly accuse our clerical friends of 
rudely thrusting too much talk of the kind which is 
technically termed i shop ' upon us. In spite of this 
being an epoch of conflict and crisis, of disestablish- 



266 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



ment and defiance, we cannot complain that (in 
society at least) the voice of priestly authority makes 
itself unduly conspicuous, or that the clamourings of 
heterodoxy are indecently loud and pertinacious in 
our ears. All young curates do not talk candles and 
ritualism ; and even the most enthusiastic youthful 
divines of the ascetic school are amenable to bad- 
minton and croquet, and can make themselves equally 
useful and agreeable at garden parties and social 
country gatherings out of Lent. The clerical ele- 
ment is no inconsiderable one in English society. Of 
one at least of our most popular novelists we may 
say that he climbed to fame by a bishop's shoulders,. 
via the episcopal gaiters and apron of that ecclesias- 
tical dignitary. Who does not feel that the world is 
all the richer for the tale of Bishop Proudie's trials,. 
Archdeacon Grantley's successes, and the Reverend 
Josiah Crawley's woes ? As for English novelists 
generally, they would be at their wits' end without 
their country parsons, portly rectors, pompous deans, 
aristocratic archdeacons, bland bishops, and meek, or 
enthusiastic, or militant, or muscular, curates. So- 
ciety acknowledges the grave but benign influences of 
the clerical presence ; young ladies — especially young 
ladies who reside in the country — are apt to declare 
that no party can be considered perfect without an. 
M.B. waistcoat. We like to see our clergy about 
cathedral towns ; a cathedral town without canons, 
minor and major, and at least a dean in residence, is 
to us like the play of Hamlet without the Prince of 
Denmark. We are scrupulous, from the highest to 
the lowest, when we gather our friends about us, to bid 



RELIGION, 



267 



our clergy to the feast, giving them a high seat at 
our board and asking for their benediction on our 
viands. Their social influence is, confessedly, great ; 
but that influence has hitherto been found not less 
agreeable than beneficial ; and it is an influence to 
which the whole body politic all the more readily 
submits, because it is neither arrogant nor clamorous, 
but is rather cheerfully sobering, and as far removed 
from impertinent interference as it is from meanness 
or servility. 

(jVery different is the social status of the German 
Protestant clergyman. Protestant clergymen in Ger- 
many are nowhere, and their social influence is 
absolutely nil. I was seven years in Germany with- 
out meeting a Protestant clergyman in 1 society.' It 
is true that when on a visit to relatives whose 
isolated estates made all social intercourse a matter 
of arrangement and calculation, I saw the pastor of 
the village every Sunday, for on that day, having no 
visitors, the chatelaine would play at cards from morn 
till dewy eve, and having exhausted the gambling 
energies of even a batch of Russian cousins auf Besuch, 
regularly despatched the Chasseur post-haste to fetch 
up the pastor to her exhausted whist-table. They 
often played into the midnight hours. We were 
strict Lutherans in those parts. On birthdays, and 
family festivities generally, the three pastors who 
held livings on the lands of my relative would come to 
pay their respects to their patron, with obsequious 
bowings and abject scrapings, remain, if bidden, to 
supper, and retire like humble dependants from the 
scene. There was no attempt at common talk or 



268 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



cordiality. They were not treated rudely because 
the treatment they received was according to custom 
and precedent ; and whilst the host and his noble 
friends, not excepting the immediate members of the 
family, took the head of the table, the clergy retired 
below the salt, and sat cheerfully amongst the head- 
foresters, secretary, farmers, and ' common clay ' 
generally. No offence was meant, and none was taken. 

But in the ' world/ in ' society/ the clerical footfall 
is never heard, nor is the clerical countenance seen to 
shine. It will perhaps be objected that I frequented 
the ungodly, and sat in the seat of the scornful. That 
was not so ; and I continued to hope for some time 
that I might meet in ' society * some of the Herren 
Geist 'lichen at whose hands I suffered much pulpit- 
thumping and cushion-dusting in the pursuit of piety 
under difficulties ; but I never met them. 

Amongst my fair friends was a lady supposed to 
be very ' pious ' 1 — that is, she went to church on 
Sunday when she was not too late, or the weather 
was not too hot or too . cold ; when it neither rained, 
nor hailed, nor snowed, nor blew. 

1 Liebe Magda,' I said to her one day, ' how is it 
I never meet Dr. Donner at your house ? ' (Dr. Donner 
was her favourite preacher; he was a very clever 

1 The use, or misuse, of this word 4 pious ' is significant. It is a 
term of contempt. To say that a lady was ' pious ' would not be to 
say anything very distinctive in a country where piety is no exception. 
But to stigmatise a sister woman as pietistisch in Germany is to express 
a contempt for her that true piety surely never deserved. Persons 
who observe any of the formulas of religion are marked persons ; there 
is a general avoidance of their society except by such as are like- 
minded with themselves. 



RELIGION. 



269 



man, and had written a learned book on the ' Minarets 
of the Mosque of Omar and the Cupolas of the 
Kremlin '). 

' Why/ said she, looking at me with a little shadow 
of perplexity on her face, ' he is certainly a most 
estimable man, highly educated, and all that sort of 
thing (have you read his " Weathercocks of the 
World"?), but he is not exactly — you know — not 
quite — of course I don't mean to say a word against 
him, but the prejudices of " society" must be re- 
spected, don't you see ? and — well, I know what you 
mean ; but it's impossible. Dr. Donner would not 
feel comfortable out of his own sphere, and — people 
would be offended.' 

But this most lame and impotent conclusion I 
was resolved forthwith to reject. * But, liebe Magda, 
when and where is a clergyman " out of his sphere" 
You expect this good man to take your soul to heaven 
and yet you think his presence will contaminate your 
body, and you refuse to breathe the same air with 
him outside the church. The apostles were but 
fishermen, and St. Paul, the tent-maker, was in no 
wise embarrassed when he stood up and made that 
famous defence before the " most noble Festus." ' 

6 But that is two thousand years ago,' said Magda, 
slightly vexed at my odious persistence, and added, 
not without a touch of triumph in her tone, ' Dr. 
Donner's mother keeps the pastry-cook's shop opposite 
the theatre, and his wife is the daughter of the man 
of whom Fritz buys all his whips, and saddles, and 
things.' There was something in this certainly. A 
beetle on his back could scarcely feel more helpless 



270 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



than I did for the moment. 4 And, besides/ continued 
Magda, enjoying my defeat, and pursuing her advan- 
tage with manifest satisfaction, ' though of course 
pride and all that sort of thing is very wrong, yet, you 
see, our clergymen are so terribly bourgeois that we 
can't possibly see them (as you do yours in England) 
with the rest of our friends.' 

' And are they not offended ? ' asked her crest- 
fallen opponent. 'Are they not offended at being 
asked alone ? ' 

\ Offended ? Oh dear, no ! But, to tell the truth, 
it is not the custom to ask them at all. They go 
about amongst people of their own class — lawyers, 
doctors, shopkeepers, and people of that kind — but 
they don't expect us to invite them.' 

Truly it is no wonder if a religion whose ministers 
are thus spoken of runs a fair chance of sinking into 
utter oblivion, and being clean forgotten for ever, like 
a dead man out of mind. 

The German Protestant clergyman is, in sober 
truth, of very little account. Nobody minds much 
what he says on things in general ; and were he to 
speak of those things more particularly of which it 
would well become him to speak out of the pulpit 
as well as in it, he would not even be tolerated. Let 
him take his hand at whist ; let him have his after- 
noon game at bowls or skittles, and smoke his quiet 
pipe whilst he thus amuses himself, and his fellow- 
citizens will not be averse from his society. Pipes 
and skittles are becoming diversions, and beer and 
tobacco promoters of good-fellowship. Only do not 
let him show that he is (or ought to be) different from 



RELIGION. 



271 



them, or all amity will be at an end. His life differs 
but little from theirs ; chiefly, perhaps, in that their 
day of rest is his day of labour. His wife does her 
duty as a Hausfraii y not troubling herself about 
theology, parish schools, refuges, homes, or hospitals ; 
his daughters knit his stockings and make his shirts, 
and cook and wash and iron and sew, in a way that 
leaves little time over for * Shakespeare and the 
musical glasses.' With his family he talks of his 
pigs and geese ; with his neighbours of the gas and 
taxes ; of religion no mention is made, nor, I fear, is 
< the enthusiasm of huriianity ' very strong upon him. 
He drones on inoffensively ; but no burning charity, 
110 ardent love, no fervent zeal, no Divine spark, glows 
in his breast, or awakens his dull soul to enthusiasm. 
He preaches his Sunday discourse, and thinks, 1 good 
easy man,' that therein his whole duty is accom- 
plished, and when his old-fashioned vehicle comes 
lumbering into town the shopkeepers welcome it with 
a contemptuous smile as ' Gottes Wort vom Lande.' 

Go to the churches of Protestant Germany, and 
what will you see ? Vast and gloomy edifices, 
empty — the huge, cold shell of what once had life. 
It is Sunday. A sprinkling of women few and far 
between is spread about the gloomy building. 
Perhaps two or three men will be there. They look 
infinitely bored and wearied. There is no poetry, 
no passion, no grace, no attraction, about the services. 
It is cold of comfort. It is bare with an almost 
indecent bareness, and formless with a depressing 
want of form. It seems as though the gifts of nature 
and art were thought to be too good to be used for 



272 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



its adornment ; or rather, perhaps, as though no hearts 
loving or simple enough could be found to beautify 
the holy places or make God's temple, like the king's 
daughter, ' all glorious within.' The shabby paper 
flowers on the altar are faded and dirty ; the altar 
cloth is ragged and threadbare ; the crucifix (cruci- 
fixes stand on every Lutheran altar) is chipped and 
dusty ; no fine linen or delicate lace graces the 
sacred mysteries of chalice or paten ; no knee is bent 
in worship (the German Protestant never kneels to 
pray) ; no sound of universal prayer and thanksgiving 
is heard. Some hymns are sung (chiefly by persons 
hidden in the organ loft), a sermon is preached, and 
the dreary function is over. 

Here and there perhaps a better state of things 
may be found, but only here and there. As a rule 
no one goes to church unless there be some special 
attraction. The Court chaplain is going to preach, 
and the royalties are expected. Everyone will 
present himself en grande tenue\ there will be scarcely 
standing-room, the suites in brilliant uniforms scattered 
broadcast, and the women in their best gowns, a 
galaxy of beauty and fashion, forming quite a gay 
and festive scene, tempered, of course, by a devout 
figure de circonstance, appropriate to the pleasant 
solemnity of the occasion. Royalties always see full 
theatres and full churches. 

For the rest, there are a thousand and one 
plausible excuses for not going to church, if excuses 
be needed. The organ is out of tune ; the preacher 
is provincial ; it is too cold ; it is too hot ; the ser-r 
vices begin too early. But the truth lies near at hand 



RELIGION. 



and is very simple. A man whom you rarely see, 
whom you never meet in private social intercourse, 
remains a stranger to you. In the hour of domestic 
trouble, of family perplexities, in the hours of be- 
reavement and affliction, in those of doubt and re- 
morse, you will not turn to such an one. To do so 
you must feel some personal sympathy with him, some 
sort of ' oneness.' You must have confidence in his 
discretion and wisdom ; you must rely on his affection 
and judgment ; above all things (so artificial are we 
grown even in spiritual matters) you must not be 
shocked by his manners. To see a man in the ros- 
trum once a week, his ordinary dress covered with a 
Geneva gown, and a frill round his neck, is not suffi- 
cient to inspire you with confidence, or to encourage 
you in feelings of attachment and respect. Once a 
w r eek ! What do I say ? Perhaps thrice a year would 
be nearer the mark, if we take into account the long 
winter, when no one goes to church if he can help it. 

In the country the peasants go to church, but the 
poorer classes in the towns look on the ' black coats y 
with prejudice and aversion, seldom darkening the 
church doors, and resenting anything like advice, as 
though it were interference, in angry and contemp- 
tuous terms. They have sayings and songs in abund- 
ance to the discredit of the clergy, and do not scruple 
to use the strongest language in speaking of their 
spiritual pastors. Within the magic circle of noble 
blood the Protestant clergyman is never admitted ; 
or, if admitted, on terms that clearly define his posi- 
tion and set a seal upon his inferiority. The middle 
class still remains — the class from wiiich he himself 

T 



274 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



springs, and in which he therefore naturally feels him- 
self most at home. But even here there is nothing 
apostolic in his influence. He is the same as the 
lawyer next door, or the linendraper over the way. 
His priestly office endows him with no special dignity, 
nor is he treated with any additional respect. They 
call him * Herr Pastor,' and he takes his hand at 
whist, his pipe and his beer with the rest, and is as 
secular in his talk as they. In this way he acquires 
no polish, nor is it possible that he should do so. The 
classe bourgeoise in Germany and our ' middle class ' 
are thousands of miles apart. They have, perhaps, 
the advantage of us in education ; their intelligence 
is greater, their acquirements more varied, their know- 
ledge more accurate and extensive perhaps than ours. 
But their manners ! Shade of William of Wykeham, 
forfend that we should dwell upon their manners! 

Pipes and beer, dressing-gowns and slippers and 
spittoons, vanished from our festivities long ago; and 
with their exodus the reign of scrupulous cleanliness, 
of tubs and long washing-bills, began. It is not to be 
supposed that a poor German pastor whose name is 
Schmidt or Meyer (the difference of caste is suffi- 
ciently indicated by the absence of the prefix 'von '), 
whose boots are seldom blacked, whose cloth is rusty, 
and whose coat is out of date, whose linen is not over 
fine (and, if the truth be told, not always over clean) — 
it is not to be supposed, I say, that such a man as 
this can feel himself very much at his ease amongst 
bland barons and contemptuous countesses, or make 
his voice heard with clerical authority amongst grace- 
ful, fashionable, well-bred folks, who are blushing 



RELIGION. 



275 



for his boots and are scandalised at his linen. He has 
none of that calm and dignified assurance that a re- 
cognised position gives. He does not feel himself to 
be a gentleman amongst gentlemen, as good as they 
by birth and education, and better than they in so 
far that his life is better and purer, and his calling a 
higher one, than theirs. He cannot worthily repre- 
sent the dignity of the Church of which he is the 
avowed servant, because, even in Germany, the days 
are gone by when uncouthness and slovenliness were 
tolerated amongst the upper classes. His position is 
not that of the poor, hard-working, peace-bringing 
English clergyman, who finds compensation for his 
poverty and many privations in the honour paid to 
the religion whose servant he is ; for whom a seat is 
vacant and a welcome just as ready at the castle as it 
is in the cottage ; whose wife is a lady, though a lady 
in linsey instead of in satin ; whose daughters are a 
match for any man, and whose sons feel no painful 
sense of inferiority when they find themselves with 
the Squire Bob Acres, or are invited to dine at the 
Hall with young Porphyrogenitus and his friends. 

There is no doubt that in most Christian countries 
religion exercises a great influence over women, and, 
by that eternal principle of compensation which can- 
not be ignored, women exercise a great influence on 
religion. Love, sympathy, tenderness, pity ; charity, 
in its Divine and universal sense — these are feelings 
to which women are more particularly subject, and 
whose influence on the female heart is immeasurable. 
Where, then, can they better find an opportunity of 
exercising the ( Divine rights 5 of Christianity than in 



276 



the good works of religion? We know in England 
that there is scarcely a parish where ladies do not 
teach the young, nurse the sick, sit by the bedside of 
the suffering, carry food to the starving, clothing to 
the naked, tend those stricken down by the pestilence 
that walketh in darkness, and courageously and 
calmly close the eyes of the plague-smitten dead. 
The Crimean war laid the foundation of great and 
heroic self-devotion, and voluntary self-sacrifice, and 
enduring courage amongst the ladies of our land. 
But long before the Crimean war the high and 
gently born had shaken off the sloth of former days, 
and in many a village school, and in many a crowded, 
pestilential alley, fair girls and gentlewomen were to- 
be seen going to and fro, teaching, persuading, alle- 
viating, encouraging. Such things have ceased to be 
remarked upon ; they have become matters of course 
amongst us. But let it not be forgotten that, if high 
and delicate souls were thus ready to do, in Christ's 
name, any work, howsoever revolting, for His sake, 
the clergy were also there, speaking nervous words in 
the hour of weakness, strong words in the hour of 
temptation, words of faith in the dark hours of 
weariness, when the sensitive and overstrung natures 
were fain to break down and weep that the flesh 
should prove so miserably weak when the spirit was 
so willing. Wherever we go our clergy are, and 
their presence is a boon, and cheers us on to further 
exertion. This is surely practical piety. It is no 
mystic asceticism ; it is no ecstatic delusion ; it is not 
born of dogmatism, nor is it controlled by any 
priestly authority. It is a free-will offering of pure, 



RELIGION. 



277 



loving hearts ; and the girls you see teaching in a 
village school to-day you will perhaps find dancing 
on the lawn to-morrow, or at an archery party on 
the next day, in the prettiest of modern costumes, 
and with the most bewitching hats and boots that 
fashion and skilled labour can produce or beauty 
wear. There is nothing morbid or unhealthy in the 
religion of these enthusiastic young souls. There is 
nothing gloomy or ascetic in it. Their hearts prompt 
them to some grateful response for all the mercies 
that have been vouchsafed to them, and the expres- 
sion of it lies in their seeking to succour those whose 
lot is less happy, and whose lives are perhaps less 
holy, than their own. 

It is precisely such pure and simple religion as 
this that our German friends cannot understand. 
There is no place for the exercise, in a German 
woman's life, of that cheerful desire to make some 
thank-offering for a prosperous existence, which 
seems the natural expression of a grateful heart. She 
is cumbered about with too much serving to have 
time for the * better part,' which cannot be taken 
away even though cakes and ale be scarce and 
ginger 1 no more hot i' the mouth.' A dull indif- 
ferentism has fallen upon her ; what Christianity she 
sees, she hears turned into ridicule ; the flat monotony 
of non-belief (rather than disbelief) is what suits her 
best. We are so accustomed to associate the open 
expression of infidelity with cynicism, that it is diffi- 
cult for us to reconcile the tone which prevails on the 
subject of religion in Germany with the sacredness 
of home life, the reverence for family ties, the respect 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



for higher things, with which we are fondly apt to 
associate it. There is no hesitation felt in handling 
sacred subjects in the most ruthless manner, nor in 
approaching the most vital questions of religion with 
an irreverence that shocks the taste, even where it 
does not wound the faith, of the astonished hearer. 

' Beautiful women without religion,' says Heine,. 
' are like flowers without perfume. They resemble 
cold, sober tulips, which look upon us from their 
china vases as though they w T ere also of porcelain ; 
and, if they could speak, they would explain to us 
how naturally they grow from a bulb, how all- 
sufficient it is for anyone here below not to smell 
badly, and how, so far as perfume is concerned, a 
rational flower has no need of it whatever.' 

His taste revolted at a defect at which his piety, 
since it did not exist, could take no exception. I 
often thought of Heine's words when I was in 
Germany ; and to me it seemed that, the more 
beautiful the women, the greater their resemblance to 
the poet's porcelain tulips. 

And Heine's is not the only Dicliterseele that 
has felt the jar and disharmony of these tulip-w'omen,, 
for whom it is sufficient to know they ' grow out of a 
bulb.' Even the man whose faith has found i centre 
everywhere, nor cares to fix itself in form,' hesitates 
to brush the bloom off the tenderer feelings of his 
womenkind. As one also of our own poets has 
said — 

1 Leave thou thy sister, when she prays, 
Her early heaven, her happy views ; 
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse 
A life that leads melodious days;' 



RELIGION. 



279 



No man with a reverent heart will desire to stay 
those tender hands that are so much purer, so much 
swifter to do good, than his own, nor care to damp 
that faith which is so much more practical, and yet 
so much more ideal, than his perfected reason. On 
the whole, Englishmen are contented that their wives 
and daughters should be simple good women, doing 
such modest deeds of kindness, and helping forward 
such good work, as may be done without ostentation, 
An Englishman is glad if his ' w T eaker vessels ' cling 
to the ancient landmarks ; he does not pretend to 
much in that way himself, perhaps, but the tears will 
come into his eyes, man of the world as he is, when 
he remembers how his delicately bred, refined mother 
worked for the poor and laboured for their benefit ; 
when he notes how swift to do good are his daughters' 
pretty hands, how large a heart for sin and suffering 
his pure and happy wife possesses. These things 
touch him more than all the philosophies of Pagan- 
dom could do. It is well for him that he should 
think of them sometimes when he is alone. He does 
not willingly shock the beliefs and prejudices of the 
women he loves. How r can he ? He reverences them 
and their deeds too tenderly for that. The German 
Protestant gentleman is, on the other hand, not 
scrupulous on these points ; but there is this to be 
said on his behalf: his wife and daughters have no 
beliefs or prejudices to shock. Religion is as far 
from them, as much of a mummery to them, as it is 
to him; he may speak his mind freely nor wound 
one gentle heart. ' Wonder is the basis of worship/ 
says our philosopher ; ' thought without reverence is 



28o 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



barren, perhaps poisonous ; ' and it is this want of 
reverence, in its largest sense, this want of love, of 
caritas, the all-embracing, which stretches forth tender, 
welcoming, ungrudging arms across the miserable 
boundaries and pettinesses of self, and yet does not 
feel that it is robbing home — it is the absence of this 
larger love that makes intercourse with the mass of 
German women so chilling and so shallow. Taking 
them on the whole, they are no whit more rational 
or more reasonable than other women, but they are 
less religious. They lock up their hearts with the 
store-room key. Where their treasure is will their 
sympathetic organs also be found ; their emotions 
cannot pass over the threshold of their ' flat ' into 
the great sinful, sick, sorrowful world without. 
Their faith is in store-rooms, their hopes are concen- 
trated on the realisation of infinite littlenesses. 
Charity, they say, begins at home, forgetting that it 
should not end there. In them the grace and poetry 
of a pure and tender faith are wanting, and the result 
is a coldness, a shallowness, and a hardness, un- 
lovely to the looker-on. 

It is not likely, if these ladies have not time for 
the simple truths of Christianity, that they should 
make time to study the complex philosophies which 
have superseded the Gospel. To sit at the feet of 
Gamaliel, and learn the shibboleth of every new 
school, is a luxury reserved for their lords. And so 
they have come, like Gallio, to care for none of these 
things ; and were they individually asked by a pro- 
fessor of things in general, 1 Wouldst thou rather be a 
peasant's daughter, that knew, were it never so rudely 



RELIGION. 



28r 



that there was a God in heaven and in man, or a 
duke's daughter, that only knew there were two- 
and-thirty quarterings on the family coach ? ' they 
would certainly declare for the family coach and the 
two-and-thirty quarterings without hesitation. 

It is true that in Northern Germany every sort of 
graceful legend and saga has been invented to clothe 
the child-Christ and render Him attractive in infant 
eyes. And what is the outcome of all these fanciful 
fables ? Simply that they sow the seeds of unbelief 
in the little mind, which, later on, finds to its dismay 
that the religion of childhood can never be the religion 
of riper years. All the fanciful fictions and wild, 
sweet myths which made the child worship with the 
Magi, and tremble at the manger, he finds to be but 
so many foolish fables invented to cheat his innocence. 
He has no time to sift the wheat from the chaff ; 
the whole Christian faith is but a field of tares to him, 
across which his path no longer lies. Heaven has 
been brought down to the child, the child has not been 
drawn up to heaven, and as ' a being breathing 
thoughtful breath' he turns away disgusted from 
these sickly human inventions to reach, if it may be, 
4 through hail and storm a purer air.' 

1 What ! ' cried our hostess at a coffee party, where 
we had, mirabile dtctu, for the moment cast scandal 
to the dogs, ' what! is anyone hypocritical enough 
heut zu Tage to say that he or she believes the 
Bible or the Testament to be different from any other 
book ? ' 

Indignant disclaimers of such base superstition 
re-echoed on all sides. 



282 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



* Und Sie?' she said, laying a fat and friendly hand 
upon my arm. 'Aber, mein Gott ! ich brauche ja 
nicht darum zu fragen. Dazu sind Sie ja viel zu 
aufgeklart' 

She was a most respectable matron of fifty ; a 
tartan silk gown covered her ample form, and her 
daughter sat smiling beside her, the picture of inno- 
cence, in white, tied up with blue ribbons. I was 
mean enough to accept the compliment, for she was an 
influential member of society, and when the female 
Areopagites met in council her voice was ever loudest 
in debate. These ladies give their yearly Thaler to 
the Gustav- Adolf- Verein or the Frauen-Verein, and 
cradle themselves in the fond belief that therewith 
the whole duty of woman is accomplished and the 
Law and the Prophets fulfilled. 

It was of the social aspects of German Protestant- 
ism, not of its theological aspects, that I undertook, at 
the beginning of this chapter, to speak, but so much at 
least I may permit myself to say — that the Protest- 
antism of Germany is not such as the grand heart of 
the great, rough-spoken, genial, enthusiastic Luther 
planned,; that it is not such as the mild Melancthon 
dreamed ; still less, if possible, does it bear a re- 
semblance to the stern simplicity which Calvin would 
fain have exacted from all those who followed him. 
No one would think, in looking at the Lutheran 
Church of Germany to-day, that it had ever had so 
jubilant and defiant a defendant as Luther. One 
wonders how an institution which is called by his 
name can have retained so little of the spirit of its. 
founder ; and one marvels that his enthusiasm, his 



RELIGION. 



zeal, his fervour, his daring, his resolution, and his 
invincible perseverance should have passed so com- 
pletely away nor i left a wrack behind.' 

/ The terms Protestant and Protestantism have come 
to be thought little of amongst us. In truth, they 
savour all too much of a clamorous baldness, of itself 
barren and unfruitful. And yet they are better than 
the still narrower sectarian names usually applied to 
Protestantism in Germany — Lutheranism and Calvin- 
ism. As if before Luther and before Calvin God's 
sun had not shone upon the earth : as though there 
were but two ways to heaven, one holding on by the 
skirt of Luther's clothing, the other following in the 
train of Calvin's cold exclusiveness. To protest at 
any rate implies that something not unimportant has 
gone before, and if I am forced, for the sake of clearness, 
to particularise by the names of their respective heads 
the two denominations, it is under protest that I do 
so. Luther himself earnestly deprecated the idea of 
his name being so used. ' Above all things,' he says, 
■ I beseech you to leave my name out of the question. 
What is Luther ? Call yourselves Christians, not 
Lutherans. This doctrine is not mine, neither have I 
been crucified for any. St. Paul and St. Peter desired 
that their followers might call themselves Christians, 
not Pauiinians or Peterists. Let us extirpate, dear 
friends, these sectarian names. I am not, and will not 
be, master of any man. I profess, in common with 
the Catholic Church, nothing but the Catholic doctrine 
of Christ only, who is the sole Master of us all.' 

Alas for Luther ! of a Church one can hardly 
speak in reference to Protestant Germany. 



284 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Protestantism, your German friends will tell you, 
lias done its work. It opened the doors to science, 
free thought, private judgment ; and after three 
centuries of science, free thought, and private judg- 
ment the world can surely dispense with puerile 
forms and feeble belief. It has done its work, as 
other good things have in other times done theirs, 
but it can do nothing more for us ; all the virtue has 
gone out of it ; we have learned to walk alone ; the 
might and majesty of modern intellect cannot bow 
beneath the yoke of the Christian myth ; reason is 
opposed to such submission. The rational men of 
Germany declare the Protestantism of Germany to 
be dry bones, dust, and ashes. They point with 
scorn to the congresses and synods, and ask you if 
theology is religion. Theology is a science comme tine 
metre, but neither the wisdom nor the research dis- 
played by these eminent theologians in discussion 
succeeds in sowing the seeds of faith in the unbeliev- 
ing minds of the masses. As for the cultured, the 
matter does not touch them. The clergy are faltering 
and feeble, the laity cold and contemptuous, and, to 
quote the words of an eminent German authority on the 
condition of the Protestant Church in his own country, 
* it is eaten to the core by unbelief, and sapped to 
its very foundations by infidelity.' 

I said at the beginning of this chapter that I 
wished to confine myself strictly to the social aspects of 
German Protestantism ; to enter no temples made with 
hands, where the vision is bounded and the outlook 
narrowed, but to judge the effects of faith as seen by 
its fruits in the outer world. With dogmas and 



RELIGION. 



285 



articles of faith I do not intermeddle. Let men 
believe what they will, only let them be in earnest 
in their belief. An effort is being made to gal- 
vanise Protestantism into life ; religion is fashionable 
in high quarters ; it is known that the Court of 
Berlin is soi-disant devout. But to the outsider the 
Christianity of Germany is a Christianity without a 
Christ ; dogma without faith ; a reform and no 
Church. It may be that out of the dust and ashes 
of German Protestantism a new faith shall arise, more 
beautiful, more tender, more enthusiastic, and noble,, 
and daring, and enduring, than the old, for it can 
scarcely be that two such men as the Great Elector 
and the Great Reformer should have fought so bravely 
with such single-heartedness, with such simple faith 
in a great and good cause, to be betrayed by a 
laggard crew at last. 



286 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH. 

I have heard frequent use,' said the late Lord Sandwich, in a 
•debate on the test laws, 4 of the words " orthodoxy and heterodoxy," 
"but I confess myself at a loss to know precisely what they mean. ' 
4 Orthodoxy, my Lord,' said Bishop "Warburton in a whisper, 'or- 
thodoxy is my doxy — heterodoxy is another man's doxy.' 

Priestley's Memoirs. 

READ by the light of later events, the preceding 
chapter 1 has something of a prophetic ring ; to be 
wise before the event is not unfrequently to be im- 
pertinent. The unknown writer of a magazine article 
does not, as a rule, flatter himself that fame flies 
before him to announce there is a prophet in the 
land ; but when a 4 special correspondent • of the 
' Times ' speaks, his words have an altogether dif- 
ferent importance, and carry a certain authority with 
them even unto the uttermost ends of the earth. 
That which a decade earlier the present writer had 
predicted, the ' Times ' Berlin i special ' announced as 
a fait accompli in a letter dated November 29, 1875. 
'L'Eglise est morte !' he cries, and no voice from the 
Fatherland replies, 'Vive l'Eglise ! 9 Other English 

1 Written some nine years ago, and reprinted from Macmillan } s 
Magazine, with additions and alterations, by the kind permission of 
Messrs. Macmillan and Co. 



THE CHURCH. 



287 



journals re-echoed, with all the freshness of surprise, 
the big paper's somewhat tardy croak of dismay, and 
even the 'Spectator' appeared astonished as well as 
alarmed at learning that Prussia was pagan. Germany 
lias always been looked upon by the mass of English 
people as a Protestant country. Its Church has been 
called in a general way the Lutheran Church, and 
its Protestantism has been regarded as pre-eminently 
strong and sincere because its reformation arose, not, 
as with us, out of personal intrigues and political 
combinations, but out of the individual fervour and 
inborn convictions of a poor, rough, obscure German 
monk. 

It was only the other day that the Primate of 
England made a speech about ' the grand old Church 
of Luther.' Let any man visit the land of Luther 
and try to discover his Church. He may go, like a 
Christian Diogenes, with many lanterns, but he will 
come back as he went. The Church of Luther has long 
since dropped his characteristic tenets, and now no 
longer (except in gazetteers and geography primers) 
bears his name. Theologically speaking, we may 
say that there are three branches of the Protestant 
Church in Germany — the Lutheran Church, named 
after the great founder ; the Reformed Church, which 
is the creation of Zwinglius and Calvin ; and the 
United Evangelical Church, which is the outcome of 
royal and political influences, and may be called the 
Church of Kings and Prime Ministers. We' will take 
the three ecclesiastical institutions in succession, for 
which purpose we must go back a little in the history 
of the world. 



288 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



When the poor Saxon monk — whose glowing 
words, falling like sparks on tinder, kindled such a 
mighty flame as should presently outblaze the glories 
of Rome itself — arose out of his monkery, and went 
forth to purge his troubled mind at Rome from the 
doubts that beset him, the world was already ripe for 
his advent. Had he not made that pilgrimage to the 
Eternal City, Luther would have been lost to us. 
Filled with vague longings which the narrow bounds 
of his monastery walls could not still, stirred by 
vague aspirations which his brethren could not un- 
derstand, the fromme Monch took his staff in his hand 
and, with his great heart full of a vast and awful hope, 
reached Rome. He fled from it in despair. He found 
an elegant dilettante Pope (Leo X.) surrounded by 
corrupt cardinals and sycophantic courtiers ; he found 
priests juggling with the sacred Mass, and adding 
blasphemy to infidelity as the sauce piquant e to their 
mockery of religion — ' Bread thou art, and bread thou 
shalt remain.' Sore wounded in soul and spirit, the 
simple Saxon monk turned and fled, shaking the 
dust of semi-pagan Rome from off his sandalled feet. 
Once more at home, work soon turned up for him to 
do. In his private capacity humble and doubtful of 
himself, this coarse, lowly-bred man was for his cause 
implicitly and invincibly courageous. Humility and 
defiance were, perhaps, his two most striking charac- 
teristics. If he had come amongst the people out 
of kings' palaces, clothed in purple and fine linen, 
speaking soft words, and preaching soothing doc- 
trines, crying peace where no peace was, and comfort 
when none came, he could never have grasped the 



THE CHURCH. 



289 



popular heart as he did. The people did not want 
comfort. They could buy comfort (such as it was) of 
Tetzel. They wanted truth. Indulgences had ceased 
to be indulgences to them, and left their hungry souls 
still famished. Thus when the man arose who, if he 
gave them sound wholesome blows with the one hand, 
held out the Gospel of Peace (in the vulgar tongue) 
with the other, they welcomed him with ' tumult of 
acclaim.' The roughness of this outspoken, earnest 
monk did not repel them. It belonged to the age 
and the people to be rough, eating largely, drinking 
deeply ; and he came to them eating and drinking 
(1 Your beer/ he wrote to friends many years after- 
wards, on what he thought to be his death-bed, i has 
been deliciously and gloriously consumed '), and they 
felt that he was not only with them, but of them. He 
called a spade a spade, and they understood him ; 
had he called it ' an agricultural implement/ they 
would have turned a deaf ear to his doctrines and 
passed by on the other side of his denunciations. 
Religion is of the heart, not of the mind ; and if. 
Luther were here and there defeated by doctors and 
disputants, his conscience was so pure, his faith so 
true, and his feeling so sound, that he never failed to 
persuade the people. 

In all things that concerned his faith Luther was 
defiant. He defied the Pope when he burned his Bull 
before the gates of Wittenberg, * and all the people 
shouted/ They shouted at his militant, masculine 
attitude. Though he wore the frock, they felt him to 
be a man. ('A squabble of friars/ said Pope Leo, in 
his supreme, contemptuous way, when he first heard 

U 



290 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of the Luther-Tetzel difficulty.) He defied the Em- 
peror as well as the Pope in later days. He defied 
principalities and powers. Prince George of Leipzig 
had an eye to him, whereof he was warned when he 
proposed to ride through the Prince's dominions. 
f And though it rained Prince Georges nine days run- 
ning . . I he cried in his whole-hearted way to certain 
of his friends who warned him of snares and pitfalls. 

6 Remember Huss,' said his advisers, when, sum- 
moned to the Diet of Worms, he set out on that 
eventful journey. 'There are devils and dangers in 
Worms/ Even the Emperor's confessor warned him 
he was to be burnt at Worms ; Bucer met him on the 
road and sought to turn him back. ' And were there 
as many devils as roof-tiles in Worms, I would on,' 
was the undaunted reply. He had Charles V. and 
Leo X. to defy. 

As he approached the city vast crowds of his 
disciples came out to meet him. Tradition says he 
left his litter, and catching a harp in his hands, 
thundered forth that magnific hymn — 

'Erne feste Burg ist unser Gott' — 

which Heine has since called the * Marseillaise 1 
of the Reformation. The Emperor had given him 
a safe-conduct ; and the Pope's party, seeing no- 
thing was to be done with the recalcitrant monk, 
w r ere glad enough to let him go. Quibblers and 
cardinals, chancellors and bishops, were at their wits' 
end and saw no other way out of their difficulty. 
' This Pope has behaved to me like a knave,' Luther 
had already said. He must by that time have been 



THE CHURCH. 



291 



pretty far gone. Consider what his attitude meant— 
to burn a Papal Bull ; to defy the Pope and the whole 
Conclave of cardinals ; to defeat an emperor and end- 
less archbishops, chancellors, and Church dignitaries. 
Think of the slavish serfdom of the age, with its 
simulacra, superstition, and servility; its absolute 
ignorance of the things which the after- world knows, 
and try to imagine what manner of man this was,* 
that had come to astonish the world and change the 
course of history. 

' It ill becomes us,' says Heine, 6 to complain of 
the narrowness of his views. Honour to Luther ! The 
polish of Erasmus, the benignity of Melancthon, 
would never have brought us so far as the divine 
brutality ("die gottliche Brutalitat " ) of Brother. 
Martin.' He was presently to defy the prejudices of; 
society and the utterances of public opinion. He, 
the ex-Augustine monk, married Catherine Bora, the 
ex-nun. 'Make haste to get her if you will have 
her/ he wrote in his rough and ready way to a rival 
in Leipzig. But it was Luther who won her. They 
were a pious, faithful couple, frugal, loving, and blessed 
with children. 

He defied not only popes and emperors, but ; all 
the powers of darkness, as the Wittenberg inkstand 
and the Worms roof-tiles prove. When he was ill, 
and some nuts rattled in a box, and prevented him 
from sleeping, he, believing the Devil to be tormenting 
him, cried out, ' Is it you ? Well, so be it I commend 
myself to the Lord Jesus.' 

In all the outer things of life he was large- 
minded, broad, and tolerant. Busybodies came about 

u 2 



292 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



him like bees, boring him with complaints of some 
Reformed parson who still clung with conservative 
affection to his cope or his cassock. ' Let him have 
three cassocks if he find comfort in them,' answers 
Luther, not, we may judge, without a sly twinkle of 
humour in his grey-blue German eye. 

He did not aim at inventing a new religion, but 
only at uprooting the corruptions which had crept 
into an old one. There was no hatred, but only 
fervour, in his crusade against the abuses that defaced 
the outward forms of the Catholic faith. He per- 
mitted images in the churches ; he believed in the 
sacraments ; he admitted confession, and practised it 
himself ; he saw no harm in many things that Calvin 
and Zwinglius rejected with supreme disgust. It may, 
perhaps, be scarcely going too far to say that he in- 
stituted the doctrine of Consubstantiation as one 
that, implying a distinction without a difference, met 
Transubstantiation more than half-way. He exorcised 
evil spirits, and when tempted of devils he took up 
his flute and put them to flight by his psalms and 
hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in his 
heart unto the Lord. 

' You have,' he says to his followers at Konigsberg, 
1 to organise a new Church. I pray you, in the name 
of Christ, change as few things as possible. You 
must not let the ceremonies of the new Church differ 
much from the ancient rites. If Mass in Latin be 
not done away with, retain it. If done away with, 
retain the ancient ceremonial and habit' This from 
a man who loved to celebrate in the vernacular, so 
that each word might be duly i understanded of the 
people;' from the man whose words, Richter says, 



THE CHURCH. 



293 



* were half-battles.' There is something pathetic in 
his attitude towards 1 the old religion/ as the mild 
Melancthon tenderly calls it. One seems to hear 
vague, infinite regret and pious clinging in the gentle 
words — 4 the old religion ' — the old home — the old 
faith— - ours no more. 

Occupied with his translation of the Bible, with 
journeyings hither and thither ; with Diets, and Con- 
fessions, and endless discussions ; plucking brands 
with his sudden, vehement eloquence from the burn- 
ing ; composing his beautiful hymns ; corresponding 
with the distant brethren ; reprimanding here, encou- 
raging there, defending himself elsewhere, Luther 
reminds us, more than any other modern figure, of 
the apostle St. Paul. ' In journeyings often ; in perils 
by mine own countrymen, in perils amongst false 
brethren ; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings 
often ; in hunger and thirst, in fastings often. Besides 
those things which come upon me daily ; the care of 
all the Churches/ 

In the midst of this busy missionary life, c spurred 
at heart with fiercest energy to embattail and wall 
about his cause with iron-worded proof/ this soldier- 
priest found little or no time to organise any matured 
scheme for the hierarchical government of the German 
Church. 

It had escaped from the authority of Rome 
simply to fall under the complete subjection of tem- 
poral princes. And the Lutheran Church, down to 
the present day, has become so irretrievably inter- 
woven with the State, that spiritual independence, in 
its truest sense, is, in Germany, a thing unknown. 

But Luther's arduous life was drawing to a close. 



294 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Division and conflict disturbed and saddened his 
last days. \ Let them who fight/ he says dejectedly, 
1 cease from being called Christians.' His pious 
spirit had found utterance in sweet spiritual songs ; 
his dear little maiden, Magdalene, had been taken 
from him. He had loved the earth and its loveliness 
— the little birds, the golden sunsets, the murmuring 
forests. He was emphatically a 'human-hearted man/ 
But if he loved his fellow-men, and wife and child, he 
loved God and heaven and the things of heaven more, 
and was in truth no less a God-intoxicated man. God's 
will was his will. In supreme obedience he found 
supreme satisfaction. But day w r as declining; he was 
getting old, weary, and world-tired, and when the time 
was fully come to lay him down and take his well- 
earned rest he was glad to close his eyes. 

{ In Luther's own country/ says Mr. Carlyle, ' Pro- 
testantism soon dwindled into rather a barren affair : 
not a religion or faith, but rather now a theological 
jangling of argument ; the proper seat of it not the 
heart ; the essence of sceptical contention, which, 
indeed, has jangled more and more down to Vol- 
taireism itself.' 

Nevertheless the Lutheran Church towards the 
end of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth 
centuries gained and kept complete ascendency 
throughout the Fatherland. Almost the last historical 
view of robust religion we have is that of Friedrich 
Wilhelm of Prussia with the Bible (like, but how dif- 
ferent from, Luther) in the one hand, boxing the ears 
of the wretched, garrulous little Wilhelmina with the 
other; summoning his family peremptorily to prayers 



THE CHURCH. 



295 



much as he summoned his soldiers to parade, and 
kicking the miserable Fritz out of the room by way 
of final benediction. Not all his brutal piety or 
regulation religion would have prevented this ener- 
getic Christian from killing his son, had not his faithful 
old friends interfered, and made clear to him through 
the smoke of a ' Tobacco Parliament,' after a fashion 
that the Bible could not, how great a scandal to civi- 
lised Europe would be the sight of a sovereign 
ordering. the execution of the heir to his throne. As 
for Wilhelmina, if history be only half-true, he often 
thrashed her to within an inch of her frail, yet tena- 
cious, voluble little life. 

What wonder if the wretched children trembled 
before, hated, and finally ridiculed a faith of which 
the person they were most bound to respect in the 
world, and who held their destinies in his despotic 
hand, was also the most familiar exponent ? By-and- 
by, when little Fritz, afterwards to be called the Great, 
came to the throne, this sort of muscular Christianity 
speedily went out of fashion. Scepticism and infi- 
delity were a la mode ; and infidel Germany, following 
in the wake of infidel France, hastened to show she 
could out-Herod Herod. Fine ladies flirted with the 
most terrible questions of human life ; courtiers co- 
quetted with philosophy. It was good tone to affect 
a spirit of enquiry that was as shallow as it was 
flippant, and to attitudinise in the postures of an 
' enlightenment ' that would not bear daylight. Schdn- 
geisterei was the shibboleth of society, and everyone, 
as we have already seen, was anxious to show how 
little his morals were guided by religion. 



296 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Let us turn to the outer aspects of the Reformed 
Church. 

The Reformed Church is the Church of Zwinglius 
and Calvin ; and as neither of these austere Reformers 
was German, we shall enter less into their personal 
history than we have into that of the essentially 
German lion-hearted Luther. That they were dia- 
metrically opposed to him on many important points 
of doctrine is too well known to need elaborate expo- 
sition here. They were for stripping public w r orship 
of all its pomp and glory, and they ruthlessly ba- 
nished all adornments from the Church of which they 
may be called the founders. Their hearts were harder, 
and their whole attitude of mind narrower and colder, 
than that of Luther, whose more elastic nature saw no 
harm in retaining many of the things they bitterly 
inveighed against. Union had often been attempted 
between the two Protestant confessions. Martin Bucer, 
one of the most eminent of the Reformers (the same 
who met Luther on his road to Worms and warned him 
of the i many devils ' there), used endless persuasion 
to induce Luther and Melancthon to sign the Witten- 
berg Concordia, and finally, in 1536, he prevailed upon 
them to do so ; but the union proved to be only a 
temporary compromise. Melancthon, during the latter 
years of his life, set his heart upon a fusion of the two 
Churches, and even went so far as to propose, with 
this object, an alteration in the Augsburg Confession ; 
but Luther held firmly to his sacramental dogmas, 
whilst Calvin rejected them as altogether untenable 
and intolerable. The Calvinists and Zwinglians looked 
upon the Lutherans with very mixed feelings as a 



THE CHURCH. 



297 



sort of Papists in disguise, and yet the Reformed 
Church has always been more anxious for union than 
the Lutheran, to which the gulf of non-sacramental 
belief seemed impassable. Leibnitz, as is well known, 
had a vast plan, not only for the union of the German 
Churches, but for a united Christendom. Zinzendorf, 
Calixtus, and Spener all sought for Christian unity 
in its largest sense ; but none of these aspirations 
were destined to be realised. 

Then came the epoch of widely-spread infidelity 
and indifferentism, during which the differences 
amongst the Christian Churches of Germany were 
entirely lost sight of, and religion sank submerged 
beneath the tide which swept over the entire length 
and breadth of the land. 

Not until the year 1 8 14, when peace was finally 
restored to Europe, and the French yoke had ceased 
to gall the neck of the German people, did a spirit of 
piety and gratitude seem once more to breathe through 
the heart of the masses in the Fatherland. 

When the reaction set in it was natural that the 
star of the Reformed Church (which professed ex- 
treme liberality) should be in the ascendant. The 
King and royal family were ' pious,' and fashionable 
preachers speedily became the order of the day. 
Yet it must be confessed that when the revival came, 
it came in too emotional a guise to impress the looker- 
on with any respect for its worth or belief in its 
stability. There was too much effusiveness for the 
dignity of religion. Everybody was everybody else's 
dear brother or sister ; there was a vast amount of 
hand-pressing, osculation, outpourings of the spirit, 
and sentimental tearfulness in the whole matter. The 



298 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



agapse of the ancients were barren fare compared 
with what Berlin could offer ; and there are not a 
few passages in the lives of Schleiermacher and his 
contemporaries that recall unpleasantly a recent 
American tea-meeting chapel-scandal. 

In the year 1814 Frederick William III. of 
Prussia, the weak-minded husband of the heroic and 
lovely Queen Louisa, visited England, and ' it was at 
St. James's Palace,' says Bunsen, in his ' Signs of the 
Times,' ' that he matured his idea of the union, and 
sketched out a liturgy to be adopted by the two Pro- 
testant Churches of Germany ' — the Church of Luther 
and the Church of Calvin. This brings us to a con- 
sideration of the third branch of the Protestant 
Church in Germany — the Church of Kings and Prime 
Ministers — known as the ' United Evangelical Church.' 

On September 27, 18 17, the King of Prussia 
issued a proclamation to the effect that it was the 
wish of the royal Head of the Church that this union 
should no longer be delayed. At the approaching 
third centennial commemoration of the Reformation 
the King would set an example to his faithful lieges 
by partaking at Potsdam, in a mixed congregation, of 
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 

In Berlin, not unnaturally, the royal behest met, 
both from clergy and laity, with a cordial response, 
and the influence of the popular preacher Schleier- 
macher ensured the local success of the scheme. 
But on the whole it proved a gigantic failure. In the 
capital the union was embraced by a large proportion 
of clergy and laity, not only from loyalty, but from 
a feeling of utter indifferentism, or from that latitu- 
dinarian spirit which invariably hails with delight the 



THE CHURCH. 



299 



removal of all the restraints which the profession of 
a creed or confession presupposes. 

Some States exclusively Lutheran rejected the pro- 
position entirely, and some, exclusively Calvinistic, 
failed to recognise the necessity of any change. The 
old Lutherans who held firmly to the doctrines 
of their founder resisted having union thus thrust 
upon them ; they adhered faithfully to that sacra- 
mental system which shows how near Luther still felt 
himself to Rome when he commended it to the 
observance of his brethren. ' As the Puseyites,' says 
Dr. Schaff, ' confine the true Church to the episcopal 
system and what they call the Apostolic succession, 
so the High-Church Lutherans would fain confine it 
to a certain sacramental system as embodied in the 
Augsburg Confession, Luther's Catechism, and the 
form of Concord. Some of them/ he says, ' would, 
I am certain, at any time rather communicate (sacra- 
mentally) with Roman Catholics than with Zwinglians 
or Calvinists.' Crucifixes, candles, and flowers still 
stand on Lutheran altars, and so lately as the year 
1856 the Lutheran Conference which assembled at 
Dresden resolved to reintroduce private confession 
and absolution, and the Consistory of Munich issued 
an order to the Churches to that effect — an order 
which was answered by protest on the one hand and 
disregard on the other, and failed to meet with any 
response or consideration from the general Protestant 
public. 

We have said that, theologically speaking, there 
are three Protestant Churches in Germany, but terri- 
torially considered there are, or were, no less than 
thirty-eight Protestant establishments. The function 



3oo 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



of Summns Episcopus has ever been claimed by all 
reigning German princes. The provincial consistories 
were always presided over by a layman; these were 
again under the control of a central consistory, and the 
Minister for Public Instruction was the representative 
of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown. Each 
little Government has, or had, its own Church, with its 
separate polity, mode of worship, and administration. 

Thus the Church is purely a State establishment, 
and when the King's liturgy was rejected, the offend- 
ing parties could not but fall under the royal dis- 
pleasure. Its reception had been positively com- 
manded, whereas the union had only been recom- 
mended. In 1827, and again in 1829, the liturgy was 
submitted to the consistories for revision. Schleier- 
macher, twelve clergymen, and the magistrates of 
Berlin rejected the King's liturgy. To induce the 
dissentients to acquiesce, a new edition was prepared, 
and this concession decided the majority of the clergy 
to accept it. 

June 25, 1830, the third centenary of presenting 
the Augsburg Confession, was considered by the King 
a most favourable opportunity for the introduction of 
his amended liturgy ; but the Lutherans, always in- 
disposed to union, since they regarded the doctrines 
of the Church of Calvin as tending to rationalism and 
religious indifferentism, still held back. A great 
number of them were suspended from office for refus- 
ing to read the King's liturgy, and those who ventured 
to preach the Gospel or administer the sacraments in 
private families were thrown into prison, or compelled, 
with their families, to leave their parishes. Nor were 



THE CHURCH. 



the clergy alone thus persecuted. Many Lutheran 
families were also fined and imprisoned for not choos- 
ing to join the United Evangelical Church. At length, 
in 1834, this miserable persecution reached its climax 
in an edict issued by authority of the King, declaring 
all Lutheran worship illegal. This roused the atten- 
tion of the public more than ever to the character of 
the new liturgy, and many thousands who had joined 
the United Evangelical Church left it to return to the 
old Church of Germany. Petitions and memorials 
were in vain. The reply was imperative. They were 
to join the King's Church or submit to the punish- 
ments their own obstinacy brought upon them. 

In many instances the churches were deprived of 
their pastors, and the rite of baptism could no longer 
be duly administered ; or when, from a feeling of 
religion, duty, or necessity, a father performed it, he 
was sent to prison. This revolting persecution was 
most violent in Silesia and the Grand Duchy of 
Posen, where the people in one place were literally 
pulled off their knees by the hair of their heads. 
Remonstrances were useless ; representations to Go- 
vernment simply brought the police down on the 
complainants, and it was not till 1836 that the Prussian 
Government, after keeping the w r retched petitioners in 
suspense, gave them leave to emigrate to Australia. 

In the year 1 840 the old Lutherans were allowed 
to organise themselves into a separate ecclesiastical 
body, but the State refused them any pecuniary 
support, and their community was legalised under the 
title of Dissenters. So much for the ' grand old 
Church of Luther ! ' 



302 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



When the late King of Prussia came to the throne 
a strong Lutheran party, calling themselves New 
Lutherans, headed by Hengstenberg, came to the 
front. The King, i the great romanticist of religion/ 
as Strauss calls him, had leanings towards High- 
Churchism. He was alive to the want of religious 
fervour and enthusiasm in good works, which ren- 
dered the Protestant Church in Germany a dead 
letter. He sought to give more form, more pomp, 
and beauty and circumstance to its services. He 
created bishops and encouraged — or perhaps we 
should rather say, invited — the petite noblesse to don 
the cassock. He was disgusted at the outcome of 
congresses and synods, and weary of the wrangling 
of opposing theologians, But the seed fell in stony 
places. The episcopal attempt was not renewed ; the 
King was laughed at for a Pietist and an Anglo- 
maniac. The tongue of scandal wagged freely, and 
everyone had his anecdote to tell of the charming 
manner in which the princes of the House of Hohen- 
zollern knew how to blend prismatically the pleasures 
of gallantry and the satisfactions of devotion. It was 
argued that so witty and worldly a monarch would 
use his religion simply as a cloak for his (political) 
maliciousness, and the movement, if movement it 
could be called, died a natural death. The year 1848 
did not raise the tone of the popular mind with re- 
gard to religion, and presently out of the King's 
Church itself arose fresh parties, whose theological dis- 
putes it would be tedious and unprofitable to pursue. 
New complications arose, and in looking round the 
spectator is tempted to exclaim — 



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303 



* Lutheran, Popish, Calvinistic : all these creeds and doctrines three 
Extant are ; but still the doubt is, where Christianity may be.' 

This brings us down to the date of the present 
Emperor's accession. The author happened to be in 
Germany when that event occurred. The irreverent 
laughter that greeted his crowning himself King ' von 
Gottes Gnaden,' and re-echoed in endless hilarious 
cachinnation all over Northern and Central Germany, 
has become historical. 1 By the grace of God ! 
What ! Were we going back to the Middle Ages ? 
Was it to be believed ? In these nineteenth century 
days ? ' and so on. It must be remembered, in ex- 
tenuation of the Icse-majcste of the laughers, that 
this benighted monarch w r as only King of Prussia 
then. Their sense of his humorous bigotry died out 
long ago, as the remembrance of their laughter has 
also doubtless perished from their now loyal minds. 
The sad successes of the seven days' war gave the 
first check to those historic cacklings. After that 
tragedy Northern Germany began to understand that 
the Prussian King, his Diinkcl notwithstanding, was 
capable of doing great things, even though the doing 
of them should be personally distasteful to him, for 
the aggrandisement of the Fatherland. 

Having conducted two vast w r ars to a successful 
issue, the good Emperor turned his thoughts from 
bloodshed to religion, from the battle-field to the 
Church. But public interest in matters ecclesiastical 
had by this time dwindled down to the most utter 
indifference. Orthodoxy (what was orthodoxy?) was 
no longer required of a clergyman ; but the new pro- 



3<H 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



gramme prescribed that piety must be petted, parsons 
encouraged, and the public invited to raise a louder 
voice in the affairs of religion. 

Congresses were called, synods were summoned : 
all to no effect. The German Liberals were too far 
gone to care to use the ecclesiastical franchise 
conferred upon them. They were invited to take an 
interest and raise a voice in parish affairs. They 
felt no interest and they desired no voice. The Con- 
servatives dreaded lest they should be out-voted, but, 
except in the larger towns, none of these Gallios so 
much as registered a vote, content to know that their 
opponents dared not make use of any advantage they 
might gain, and secure in the fact that, let the result of 
the poll be what it would, the heart of Prussia was 
pagan to the core. Sceptical Germany could afford to 
let the believing few triumph, since the unbelieving 
many felt that triumph to be futile. Where congrega- 
tions do not care for their clergy, it naturally follows 
that the clergy do not care to serve those who are so 
utterly indifferent to them. As a matter of fact, there 
is no love lost between the parties. The t Times ' cor- 
respondent, in the letter already alluded to, gives the 
following short sketch of the present state of affairs 
as regards the German Church : — { When it is consi- 
dered that the number of theological students in the 
German universities has within the last forty years 
fallen off by two-thirds, though the number of clergy- 
men wanted has increased with the growth of the 
population, it is obvious that orthodox vestry meet- 
ings should consider it a portion of their allotted 
work to make the clerical calling attractive in the one 



THE CHURCH. 



305 



item at their command. They may not now be able 
to render theological studies palatable to the general 
run of young men at college, but they might, at any 
rate, try and do away with the 100/. livings, upon which 
curates are condemned to starve in not a few villages 
of the old provinces. They have attempted nothing 
of the kind, and the consequence is that young men 
take their revenge and decline to ascend the pulpit 
Already many parsonages are empty, and more are 
becoming so every day. To illustrate this astounding 
fact by a few figures, the eight Prussian universities 
in 1831 boasted 2,203 theological students; by the 
winter of 1873 this figure had dwindled down to 740. 
Nor does it look more promising in Western and 
Southern Germany. Of the two Hessian Universities 
of Marburg and Giessen, the former had 124 theolo- 
gical students in 183 1, against 46 in 1873 ; the latter 
having 80 in 1850, against 10 in 1873. Even in 
Wurtemberg, the most theologically inclined region 
of Germany, the supply of young candidates for 
clerical honours has so steadily diminished that, 
whereas 48 went up for examination in 1823, only 
32 did so in 1873. But what is more significant than 
anything else is that of the Prussian students of 
theology who matriculated in the Prussian universi- 
ties between 1851 and 1873, one-third abandoned 
theology before ordination ; that parsons' sons are 
nowadays least likely to become parsons, and that 
the clergy get few (if any) recruits from the cultivated 
classes. No wonder that, with these figures before 
them, the supreme governing body of the Evangelical 
Church of Prussia should have declared a year ago 

X 



306 



GERMAN HOME LIFE, 



that in a year or so one-sixth of all benefices becom- 
ing vacant would have to remain vacant Things 
being in this plight, is it necessary to waste a word 
upon the prospects of General Synod ? ' 

1 Ce que roi veut, Dieu le veut.' Not always ; and it 
must be confessed that in this matter of religion the 
Emperor has fallen upon evil days. The ladies of 
the imperial and royal families have loyally lent their 
aid to further his Majesty's views, and many admir- 
able institutions which but for the smile of royal 
favour and the expression of imperial interest would 
have resulted in utter failure still struggle on. Left 
to public generosity, it may be fairly doubted whether 
their existence would have been more than ephemeral. 
The Crown Princess of Prussia and Princess Louis of 
Hesse have shown the liveliest personal interest in 
the various nursing institutions which are under 
their patronage, and ladies have been found able and 
willing to join the good work ; but even with these 
immediate advantages the success is uncertain and the 
result not satisfactory. To English eyes, accustomed 
as they are to the sight of thousands of ladies (working 
for hospitals, refuges, and homes, untiring in their ob- 
scure self-devotion, on whom the eye of royalty has no 
time to shine), the response of a few hundred women 
to the gracious appeal and unaffected interest of these 
gentle princesses seems utterly inadequate, whilst the 
difficulty as to funds is, to say the least of it, depressing. 

One institution of deaconesses enjoys a world- 
wide renown, and more than one English sister of 
mercy, as the experiences of Florence Nightingale 
and Agnes Jones testify, has found its rule almost 
intolerably severe, so thorough is the training and so 



THE CHURCH. 



307 



hard the life to which its probationers are subjected. 
Another similar institution in the East has done good 
work, though complaints have been heard of the 
selfishness and narrowness of tone, as regards succour 
to non-Germans, which somewhat impedes the exer- 
cise of its functions ; and Dr. Laseron's establish- 
ment in this country has met with ample recognition 
as valuable and practical in its results. 

During the Franco-Prussian war many fair ladies 
rushed to the field to stanch the bleeding wounds of 
the heroes of the Fatherland. It was the same with 
us during the Crimean war. Some did fairly good 
service, some proved utterly incompetent, whilst other 
some would have deserved the Iron Cross far better 
for staying at home and ' minding' their families. 
Censorious spinsters already in the sere and yellow 
sat comfortably behind the stove, and snorted con- 
tempt at the whole thing as affording a plausible 
pretext for otherwise not possible flirtation. 

' The only result,' says the ' Times/ referring to 
the spiritual deadness of Prussia, * of the attempt to 
establish and organise a spiritual congregation in 
every Prussian parish is the discovery that there exist 
no materials for the edifice, and Germany is letting 
its Church go, content to tell the parishioners that if 
they wish their minister not to die of starvation (the 
Conservative majority was too timid to vote higher 
stipends to the clergy), and the whole institution to 
die out with him, they must pay for it themselves, as 
nobody will pay for them/ 

It is always a delicate matter to appeal to the 
German purse. Everyone has his tender point, and 

x 2 



3o8 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



a lesion between pelf and pocket is a serious wound 
indeed. Anyone who knows the frugal virtues of 
the nation will understand that it is out of the question 
a rational German should misapply his funds by 
paying for a thing he does not want. Religion, it 
appears, is a ware that cannot be cheapened. Higher 
emoluments might perhaps have saved the Church 
of Germany. Upon less than their present pittance 
her clergy decline to starve. Your frugal Teuton 
only permits himself the necessaries of life; he leaves 
to others, richer and less rational, the luxury of re- 
ligion. For the moment a complete vacuum occurs in 
the religious belief of the German people. They 
have rejected the God of Christendom. Their cry, it 
is true, is still for i God and Fatherland/ For Father- 
land and God would be more sincere. 

6 Who carved marble ? ' asks Mr. Emerson. i The 
believing man, who wished to symbolise their gods to 
the waiting Greeks.' It would be difficult to fix the 
centre of the German divinity, unless we find it 
where St. Paul fixed that of certain of the Philip- 
pians. The deity created by the flesh-pots of the 
Fatherland is not less honoured in his way by carving 
than were the gracious gods of ancient Greece, whom 
the believing man did into marble. ' The ground for 
anxiety which this state of things holds out/ says the 
' Spectator/ ' is not so much fear for the growth of 
simple worldliness and disbelief in the supernatural, 
as fear that some strange and dangerous form of fanati- 
cism may take its place, for we have no belief at all in 
the permanent vacuum of religious belief in the minds 
of a great Western people. 

' We should expect to see in Germany some very 



THE CHURCH. 



309 



grim superstitions growing up, so soon as the ground 
recently occupied by German Protestantism has been 
left fallow for a few years ; and we should fear that 
they would be superstitions of a kind likely to give 
great trouble, not only to the homes of the people, 
but to the Government of the State. Missionaries of 
some kind, with a smattering probably of science and 
a vehement dislike of revelation, would soon occupy 
the ground deserted by the State Churches ; and if 
they did, there is little doubt that the communism 
which has so long had an attraction for the German 
artisans would spread to the German peasantry. In 
that case the Government would not fail to take 
alarm, and to our minds its alarm would be very just. 
There is quite enough extreme poverty in Germany, 
and quite enough capacity for enthusiasm, and quite 
enough and not too much education, to render any 
alliance between superstitious ideas and social dis- 
contents a very serious danger. 

6 No doubt this is somewhat speculative lamenta- 
tion. All we know is that the German artisans go 
much further in their grim socialism than the English 
artisans, that Karl Marx has found it impossible to 
recruit much of a school in England for theories 
which have gained great acceptance in Germany ; 
and that the German nation, though now steadily 
craving facts, and very suspicious of mere ideas, is 
apt to become very dreamy, and yet very fanatical, 
about its expression of facts — which are often, after 
all, only the most visionary of ideas, though they 
look so much more solid owing to the materialism of 
their basis. But this at least is certain, that it is 
always a most anxious crisis when an educated nation 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



like the Germans, possessed of vast power to influence 
the destinies of Europe, cut themselves loose from 
the traditional convictions of faith and duty which 
have hitherto governed their life, and organise their 
great resources so as to be at the mercy of almost 
any principle which may spring into the vacant seat 
of the old religious beliefs/ 

Successive Kings of Prussia have tried to put 
religion into uniform, and endeavoured to constrain 
people to worship according to order in a national or 
State Church. Protestantism has been lauded for 
'its admirable flexibility of doctrine/ but, so far as 
Germany is concerned, it may be said that this * admi- 
rable flexibility ' has not a little contributed to the im- 
proving of it off the face of the Fatherland altogether. 

We are so accustomed to speak of Germany as a 
Protestant country that we do not realise the fact 
that, reckoning Austria with the other States, Catho- 
licism predominates in the Fatherland. According to 
Dr. Schaff, Northern Germany is predominantly Pro- 
testant (i.e. indifferent), Southern Germany predomi- 
nantly Catholic. The same author states that there 
are six millions of Catholics against ten millions 
of Protestants in Prussia proper ; and without laying 
any undue stress on these figures, they assist us to the 
conclusion that the persecution of the Catholics must 
have proved a painful matter to a large proportion of 
the Prussian population. 

Many of the old Catholic families have been 
deeply wounded by the aggressive attitude of the 
State. The iron hand has laid its mailed grasp as 
harshly upon the men of peace as if they had been 
men of war ; but the Catholic community has main- 



THE CHURCH. 



3ii 



tained its attitude of passive resistance, and arch- 
bishops and bishops have suffered imprisonment and 
exile with a dignified endurance that has invested 
their cause, or gone far towards doing so, with the 
prestige of martyrdom. The attitude of the Father- 
land to its Catholic children impresses the impartial 
observer, to say the least, as step-fatherly. No sub- 
mission worth speaking of has taken place amongst the 
ranks of the Catholic clergy, though many Prussian 
journals, so long as public attention was directed to 
the matter, were at pains to show that the working 
priesthood would hail with joy the overthrow of their 
prelates and a release from the Papal yoke. 

' The State ' (we in England scarcely realise how 
formidable these words are in German ears) arro- 
gates to itself a right, not over men's bodies only, 
but over their consciences. The most highly educated 
country of the Continent has failed to appreciate the 
fact that in dealing with the higher part of humanity, 
its immaterial side, prisons and penalties are useless ; 
and intelligent despotism, in instituting a Protestant 
Inquisition, has gone far towards casting the aureole 
of martyrdom round the Roman Catholic faith. 

'Liberty of conscience,' says a modern writer, 
'exists no longer in Prussia, and where liberty of 
conscience is violated all liberty perishes. Prussia 
has become the strongest and least civilised country 
in the world. Its civilisation is that of the world 
without God. Alcibiades was an orator, a soldier, 
a refined citizen, a free-thinker, an aristocrat ; a 
despiser of superstitions, a mutilator of sacred things, 
a profligate and a fop. Such civilisation I do not 
deny to Prussia, but it is not the civilisation of the 



312 



GERMAN HOME LIFE. 



Christian world.' Perhaps examples of the modern 
Alcibiades, sauntering unter den Linden, may recur to 
the memory of some of my readers as they peruse 
these lines. It is well known that Prince Bismarck is 
the Pontifex Maximus of Prusso-ecclesiastical polity, 
and that Falk is his prophet ; but it is not so generally 
understood (in England at least) that the persecution 
of the Roman Catholics and the protection of the 
Protestants is inspired, not by religious prejudice, but 
by the exigencies of the political programme. The 
Lion of the Prussian Chambers might personally not 
be indisposed to lie down with the Lamb of the 
Vatican did the glory of the Fatherland render such 
common recumbency desirable ; and the temporary 
lull in the persecution of the Roman Catholic part of 
the community (it began to abate after the Emperor's 
visit to Italy) leads one to hope that since Protes- 
tantism has been proved a failure, the statesmen of 
the day are prepared to tolerate (for more than tolera- 
tion it were vain to look) Roman Catholicism, aware 
of the danger that State runs where no form of 
religion controls the savage passions of the masses. 

Frederick the Great, whose home policy was one 
of eternal meddling, was wise enough never to meddle 
with religion. His famous axiom that every man 
should be allowed to go to heaven his own way has 
crystallised into a proverb. 

'Where you meddle with the point of religion/ 
says Francis Bacon, 'you run risks. Memento quod 
es homo ; and memento quod es vice Dei. The one 
bridleth the power, the other the will.' 

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